Muscle, Metabolism, and Milk—Dairy and Dairy Protein’s Role in Healthy Aging in Childhood and Beyond with Daniel Moore, PhD

Join us as we sit down with Daniel Moore, PhD, professor of muscle physiology at the University of Toronto and invited speaker at the ADSA Annual Meeting. He explains how muscle serves as the body’s primary storage for amino acids, the building blocks crucial for immune function, and emphasizes its importance beyond just physical strength into healthy aging and metabolic health. In his lab, he’s working to understand which foods—and which types of high-quality protein—can best support recovery and muscle development, with a focus on childhood. Are children just little adults, for example, or are they entirely different? How can nutrition best support them after exercise and help with the healthy muscle growth that will carry them into adulthood? Matt and Daniel discuss the importance of milk as a whole food rich in essential amino acids that can underpin this critical muscle development, focusing on his interest in leucine. He highlights the importance of teamwork and mentorship in his lab, sharing his strategies for fostering a supportive atmosphere for his students, drawing from his time in industry at Nestlé’s research center in Switzerland (including his experience being woken up by cowbells). Finally, the two digress on the fascinating topic of muscle preservation in hibernating animals and consider its potential relevance to dairy cows.

Episode Twenty-Five Show Notes

Learn more about Daniel Moore and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Are you interested in even more breaking dairy foods science? Join us at the 2025 ADSA Annual Meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, this June!

The Journal of Dairy Science is releasing a forthcoming special issue, Dairy Foods: A Matrix for Human Health and Precision Nutrition, in April. Look out for the latest research on this topic!

Catch up on the papers, news articles, and podcasts discussed in the episode:

Postexercise dietary leucine retention for whole-body anabolism is greater with whey protein isolate and fish-derived protein hydrolysate than nonessential amino acids in trained young men, International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism (2024)

Estimation of skeletal muscle mass in 4-year-old children using the D3-creatine dilution method, Pediatric Research (2023)

Protein quality and the food matrix: Defining optimal versus maximal meal-based protein intakes for stimulating muscle protein synthesis, Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism (2023)