Nutrition Conversations

Few nutrition topics have generated as much heat—and as little clarity—as seed oils. They are often blamed for inflammation, chronic disease, and poor metabolic health, yet they are also some of the most studied fats in human nutrition. Dr. Jessie Burns is a clinical scientist and consultant with a PhD in Human Health and Nutritional Sciences from the University of Guelph, where her doctoral research focused on dietary fatty acids, inflammation, and chronic disease prevention. She also completed postdoctoral training in clinical women’s health research at Carleton University before transitioning from academia into a non-academic career in clinical science and evidence-based medicine. In her current roles, she collaborates with clinicians, industry partners, researchers, and health organizations to review, appraise, and synthesize complex scientific evidence for clinical guidance, knowledge translation, and education. Though she has formally left academia, she continues to collaborate with academic researchers on projects related to dietary fats and women’s health. In this episode, Dr. Burns discusses the role of seed oils on our health, challenge common fears, and distinguish evidence-based facts from social media misinformation.

Food is central to our health, but the work that goes into making food happen every day—planning, shopping, cooking, negotiating, and cleaning up—is often invisible. This foodwork shapes not only what we eat, but how food, care, responsibility, and power are shared within households. Yet it’s rarely measured, named, or addressed in health research or policy. Dr. Leah Cahill is a registered dietitian and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She completed her undergraduate degree in nutritional sciences at the University of Manitoba, a dietetic internship with the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority and her PhD in medicine focusing on interactions between nutrition and genetics at the University of Toronto, and then moved to Boston to work as a postdoctoral scientist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. During her five-year postdoc at Harvard, Dr. Cahill worked in the Department of Nutrition collecting skills in nutritional epidemiology and research methodology as she investigated the dietary and genetic origins of cardiometabolic disease in large cohort studies. She is currently the Howard Webster Research Chair in the Department of Medicine at Dalhousie University and Nova Scotia Health where she leads a research program named nourish that investigates nutrition, biomarkers, and clinical patient-oriented research initiatives. In this episode, Dr. Cahill discusses foodwork as a critical—but overlooked—determinant of health and wellbeing, and what it means to study food not just as nutrients, but as a social and relational practice.

Nutrition plays a role in nearly every major chronic disease, yet the science behind what we eat often feels confusing or contradictory. Nutritional epidemiology is the field that tries to make sense of these patterns by studying diet and health across populations. In this conversation, we are going to explore what this field can—and can’t—tell us about how food affects our health. Dr. Russell de Souza is a registered dietitian and Associate Professor in the Mary Heersink School of Global Health and Social Medicine and the Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence, and Impact at McMaster University. His passion lies in understanding how what we eat and the environments we live in shape our health throughout life. He conducts everything from clinical trials to in-depth interviews, and works with teams to use cutting-edge ‘omics’ science to dig deeper into our diets. What really drives him is finding ways to help communities that often get overlooked, like pregnant women, South Asian immigrants and Indigenous Peoples, reduce their risk of chronic diseases. Along the way, he has earned prestigious recognition, including the 2023 CNS Young Investigator Award, and his department’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Award. In this episode, Dr. de Souza discusses how nutritional epidemiology shapes our understanding of diet and health.

Sugar-sweetened beverages are one of the most widely consumed sources of added sugars in our diets, and their impact on health has become a major focus of nutrition research and public policy. Governments around the world are exploring tools like taxation to curb intake, but how well do these strategies work—and for whom? Dr. Scott Harding is an Associate Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Memorial University in Newfoundland. His research interests include glucose metabolism, cholesterol biochemistry, and the effects of public health policies on reducing obesity and chronic disease, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador. Dr. Harding's research lab focuses on cardiometabolic diseases, using animal and in vitro models, human trials, and population studies. His team studies public health initiatives like sugar taxes and the metabolic impacts of dietary sugars and fats under varying intake levels. They also investigate how diet and lifestyle factors, such as short or disrupted sleep, activity, and dietary patterns, affect disease risk and nutrient metabolism. Dr. Harding earned his PhD in Human Nutrition from McGill University and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Manitoba and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. He has previously held an academic position at King’s College London before joining Memorial University and is currently the Co-Editor of the Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism. In this episode, Dr. Harding discusses the evidence behind sugar-sweetened beverages, what drives consumptions, and what policies including taxation might actually move the needle.

The first months of life are a special time for the health development and protection of infants. Breastfeeding is the natural and best way of feeding an infant, and positively influences their development and health. Human milk provides the ideal balance of nutrients for the infant and contains countless bioactive ingredients such as immunoglobulins, hormones, oligosaccharides and others. Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are a very important and interesting constituent of human milk, and are the third most abundant solid component after lactose and lipids. Dr. Lisa Renzi Hammond is the Leonard W. Poon Professor for Innovation in Public Health at the University of Georgia in the United States, interdisciplinary group lead for Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience, and founder of the Human Biofactors Laboratory. She is also Director of the University of Georgia College of Public Health’s Institute of Gerontology, a research institute that studies lifespan development, from infancy through older adulthood. Her latest project is the development of the Cognitive Aging Research and Education (CARE) Center at the University of Georgia – a state of the art facility dedicated to lifespan neurodegenerative disease prevention, starting in infancy and early childhood, through behavioral intervention, neurodegenerative disease diagnosis and post-diagnosis support. She has presented this research in a wide variety of national and international venues, including the TED stage. This episode is sponsored by Abbott Nutrition.