Daniel Moore

Assistant Professor,
Kinesiology & Physical Education

Healthy living advocates often use the expression 'exercise is medicine.' Daniel Moore, an assistant professor with the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, likes to add that the right nutrition helps to make exercise even better medicine.

“Our faculty members have a lot of expertise in exercise. It can take form in preparing guidelines for sports sciences bodies, such as the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology, helping to develop new physical activity curriculum for Ontario’s schools, or understanding the health benefits of activity in healthy and clinical populations,” says Moore. “But our Faculty does not have the same level of expertise in nutrition as some of the partners in the Lawson Centre. This is why I am excited about the opportunity to align my research in children with the Lawson Centre's scientists.”

Moore’s research focuses on the interplay between exercise and nutrition across different population groups.  He has previously studied how different nutrients — particularly proteins — help young adults’ muscles recover after exercise and older muscles stay healthy with age.

“In some of my previous research, we studied how the amount, type and timing of dietary protein ingestion all influenced the efficiency by which muscle recovered after exercise in the context of sports training,” explains Moore. “From this work I realized that there is a need to similarly understand the nutritional requirements in active kids and adolescents – those who have more daily exercise in comparison to average children because they are involved in hockey, soccer or other sports. Unfortunately, we know relatively little in this area.”

In children, Moore’s research concentrates not only on the relationship between nutrition and exercise, but also studies how being active can aid nutrition in improving overall growth and development.

“We look at metabolism at the whole body level — not just muscles — in children, which we believe to be a better reflection of the potential outcomes of exercise and nutrition interventions since kids’ bodies grow very quickly. We hope to leverage this information to guide nutritional best practices in active children and adolescents to enhance their growth and development.”

Moore emphasizes that while his work has a large focus on kids involved in sports, the findings are significant for the entire population of children and adolescents. He says that the Lawson Centre presents a great opportunity to translate some of the findings of his research into clinical applications, and also to promote disease prevention and the benefits of exercise and healthy diets.

“The Lawson Centre also allows me to access the clinicians at the forefront of work with children affected by disease, which provides an opportunity to leverage new knowledge in healthy kids to clinical populations who may obtain an even greater benefit,” says Moore. “But as experts agree that it’s a lot easier and less expensive for our health-care system to prevent rather than treat many diseases, our findings could have a much broader implication for health and well-being of all Canadians through the expertise at the Lawson Centre and its established channels for knowledge translation.”

Previously, Moore was part of a research and development team at a major research centre in Europe for a large international foods producer. “It was during this time I realized that there are huge knowledge gaps in identifying potential synergies between active living and childhood nutrition, especially in the context of protein metabolism, which motivated me to develop new evidence to support nutrition recommendations and solutions.”

Moore’s research achievements have been recognized through a Young Investigator Award by the American Society for Nutrition, as well as a Canada Foundation for Innovation’s award for his work on high-performance muscle metabolism.

At a glance:

Daniel Moore, PhD

Research Interests

• Muscle protein metabolism
• Musculoskeletal health with exercise and disuse
• Sports nutrition
• Training adaptations
• Muscle stem cell regulation

Appointments

• Assistant Professor, Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education, University of Toronto

Contact

• Phone: 416-946-4088
• Email: dr.moore@utoronto.ca

See Daniel’s profile on the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education website for more information.