Lauren Toyota is a Toronto-based content creator, plant-based chef, and author best known for building hot for food, one of the most recognized plant-based culinary brands in North America. Since launching in 2014, hot for food has grown into a full creative platform spanning YouTube, social media, two bestselling cookbooks, and a devoted community of home cooks hungry for food that’s bold, comforting, and entirely plant-based.

Lauren is the author of Vegan Comfort Classics: 101 Recipes To Feed Your Face and hot for food all day: easy recipes to level up your vegan meals, both published by Ten Speed Press/Penguin Random House. Her YouTube channel has earned nearly 450,000 subscribers and over 43 million views. She was named Canada's Most Influential Vegan by IMPACT magazine and recognized as one of Refinery29's Powerhouse Canadian Women.

Beyond content creation, Lauren works with brands as a creative partner and brings her plant-based cooking directly to clients through personal chef services and select special event catering.

Before hot for food, Lauren spent close to a decade as one of Canada's most visible television hosts and producers. She was a MuchMusic VJ and hosted New.Music.Live, the station's daily flagship show, interviewing artists including Katy Perry, Will Ferrell, and One Direction, and co-hosting the MuchMusic Video Awards alongside Selena Gomez and others. Her broadcast career began in Vancouver in 2005, hosting youth lifestyle programming, earning a Leo Award nomination, before moving to MTV Canada and Bell Media properties across the country. That foundation in storytelling, interviewing, and on-camera performance shapes everything she does today.