The ingredients of health: a conversation with Scott Harding

What if the key to preventing chronic disease wasn’t a miracle drug or a groundbreaking surgery but the choices we make every day—what we eat, how we sleep, and how we move? While we often think of nutrition as a simple input-output equation, nutrition scientist Dr. Scott Harding likens it to a tapestry of interactions: our small choices, all enmeshed, create the fabric of our health. But how do these threads connect? And what happens when they start to fray?

Dr. Harding, the new co-Editor-in-Chief of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, and a leader in cardiometabolic research, is on a mission to understand just that. With a focus on glucose metabolism, cholesterol biochemistry, and lifestyle factors like sleep and diet, his work provides a holistic view of health and reveals how subtle adjustments—like adding omega-3 fats to your diet or improving your sleep quality—can transform long-term outcomes. “Chronic diseases don’t develop overnight,” Harding explains. “They’re built over decades of seemingly insignificant choices.”

Our current choices aren’t doing us many favours. Chronic diseases—such as heart disease, diabetes, and even certain cancers—are rising worldwide and affecting younger people, fueled by poor diets and sedentary lifestyles. Public health policies, like Newfoundland and Labrador’s recent sugar-sweetened beverage tax, aim to tackle these issues, but their success depends on understanding the science behind behaviour change.

Of course, challenges abound. Misinformation about fats, for instance, continues to confuse the public about what’s truly healthy. And how do you convince people to rethink their habits when change feels overwhelming? Through his lab’s work on omega-3s, sleep disruption, and even sea urchins, Dr. Harding demonstrates the power of creative, evidence-based solutions to these complex problems.

In the interview below, Dr. Harding shares how his career journey—from studying the cholesterol-lowering effects of oats on BBC’s Trust Me, I’m a Doctor to exploring the therapeutic potential of sea urchin waste—has shaped his approach to research, public health, and communication. He offers insights into the intersection of science, policy, and outreach, encouraging young researchers to step into the spotlight and make their voices heard.

Ready to hear more? Dive into our Q&A with Dr. Scott Harding to explore the science behind nutrition, the nuances of metabolic health, and how we can all weave healthier habits into our lives.

Your research focuses heavily on cardiometabolic diseases, including glucose metabolism and cholesterol biochemistry. Was there a specific moment or experience that inspired you to pursue this field? 

My interest probably started between my PhD and postdoc. I moved from a lab that focused on gastrointestinal health to a lab that focused more on biomarkers of disease. The techniques I used were the same across those two labs, but the focus was very different. During that postdoc, I became very interested in the interventions that prevent or reverse negative outcomes that predispose you to disease. For example, in that lab, we worked on nutritional factors that you can consume to reduce blood cholesterol levels. We looked at things like phytosterols, soluble fibres from oats and barley, all with the goal of lowering individuals’ blood cholesterol levels. These were dietary interventions to improve health that didn’t focus only on weight loss, but on improving health holistically with functional elements to reduce disease risk. 

Sleep and nutrition are both key factors in your research. How do you approach studying the interaction between sleep disruption, energy balance, and nutrient metabolism? Could you tell us a little about how the three interact?

When I started my first faculty position in the UK, I carried with me the idea of looking at nutritional factors that can be augmented to impact someone’s disease risk. One of my first PhD students was very interested in how sleep impacted overall health as a lifestyle factor. She explored how sleep influenced the foods people consumed. This led us to adopt a more holistic approach, examining lifestyle factors like diet and sleep. We studied healthier populations to understand how sleep habits might predispose individuals to risks later in life, similar to the way we know that poor diets have a long-term impact on chronic disease. We hypothesized that sleep could also be something to augment. Data suggested that shorter or more disturbed sleep pushed individuals toward consuming higher amounts of added sugar. While this might seem like a small contribution, changing that behaviour, along with others, could significantly improve health outcomes. 

In these studies, we didn’t just focus on foods but the entire individual. We used tools that measured sleep but that also tracked activity levels, including physical activity and sedentary time. These are critical health factors that often go underreported. Combining all these factors helps us fit them into the dietary picture, allowing us to better understand the relationship between diet, activity, and health risk factors like blood cholesterol and glucose levels. 

Your team investigates the metabolic impact of dietary omega-3 fats. What should people know about how these fats are processed in the body, and why are they critical for health?  

Omega-3 research is fascinating, though often misunderstood due to mixed messages about fats. There’s a lot of confusion about what’s essential, what’s healthy, and what’s not, and myths persist even about crucial fats like omega-3 and omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids. 

Public health guidelines, like Canada’s Food Guide, consistently recommend lowering saturated fat intake and increasing healthy fats, particularly omega-3s and omega-6s. However, omega-6 fats have been unfairly criticized, despite over fifty years of research supporting the benefits of reducing saturated fat and increasing polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats for heart health. 

The issue isn’t that omega-6’s are harmful, it’s just that we already get enough of them. In contrast, in developed countries, like Canada, the US, and the UK, people don’t consume nearly enough omega-3s. These fats come primarily from fish, marine sources like algae, and some plant-based oils like flaxseed and canola. Low fish consumption in many regions makes it difficult to get enough. While supplements can help, I recommend dietary sources as they provide additional nutrients beyond omega-3s.  

Newfoundland and Labrador introduced Canada’s first sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax in 2022, and since then, the Harding lab has been analyzing its effects. What have been the most surprising results from your analysis so far? 
 
That analysis is ongoing, and we’re submitting the report to one of our funders who need to review it first. While I can’t discuss specific findings yet, expect to have interesting findings to report soon. Check back later this year! 

We’ll be following for updates! Based on all your experiences, do you think public health initiatives can effectively curb the rise of chronic disease? Is that type of change possible from policy?  

Tax policies, like the sugar-sweetened beverage tax, are just one piece of the puzzle. Taxes can make unhealthy behaviours, like drinking soda, more expensive, but they can also make healthy behaviours more affordable. Some governments, like our provincial government here in Newfoundland, have tax credits for physical activities—you can deduct the cost of gym memberships or children’s recreational activities from your income tax. These are health policy tools within the tax policy area, rather than in the Department of Health. 

Taxes are one of our levers. For someone deciding whether to register themselves or their child for an exercise class, having a financial incentive through tax credits makes it more achievable. When combined with punitive taxes, like the sugar tax, these policies can encourage behaviour changes. 

But at a population level, you’re never going to move everyone with just one lever. For example, some people still smoke and drink alcohol even though both of those goods are taxed much more than sugar-sweetened beverages. No public health policy can reach everyone, which is why we need many initiatives and many strategies.

Chronic health conditions are on the rise, but collective behaviour change is slow. Does this ever discourage you?  

Slow progress isn’t discouraging—it’s about persistence. Public health initiatives drive awareness and promote behaviour change, even if the results are incremental. 

It’s interesting to shift from looking at individual changes in clinical studies to examining the population level. It can seem disheartening because clinical trials show more significant individual effects, while policy changes often have smaller impacts. 

The real value of public health initiatives lies in driving consistent awareness about health issues and preventative action. Policies can create broader conversations about diet, physical activity, and chronic disease. This attention can lead to small but meaningful changes in behavior, like cooking more meals at home or reducing processed food consumption. 

Public health campaigns must seize opportunities to keep these issues visible in the media. Highlighting regional health challenges, such as poor diet quality or obesity, can help sustain public attention and encourage healthier choices. If public discussions highlight diet problems specific to a region, like Newfoundland, and the public knows policies are being implemented to address them, that visibility can help shift behaviours.

Your research extends to the valorization of underutilized marine species from the Atlantic Ocean. Can you tell us more about this work and its potential role in promoting food sustainability? 

The work on underutilized marine species is a real side project. We got some targeted funding, so I seized the opportunity to look at some species we have here in Newfoundland that could be developed in aquaculture but aren’t for various reasons. 

Take the sea urchin, for example. You can’t grow them the same way you’d grow salmon or rainbow trout. They have a very different lifecycle and method of harvest; they’re always collected from the ocean floor by divers.  

Sea urchins are valued for their roe (eggs) which are eaten like caviar.  In aquaculture, sea urchins are often fed high-quality diets to maximize roe yield. However, roe makes up only 5 to 15% of the sea urchin’s body weight, meaning that 85% of the animal goes to waste. It makes for a pretty poor business model! 

Our research explores ways to make better use of the entire sea urchin. A PhD student in our lab is investigating compounds in the unused portions, such as lipids, proteins, or peptides, that could have therapeutic benefits. These might include supplements for humans, pet food, or agriculture. She’s also examining unique compounds responsible for the coloration of sea urchin shells, which might have antimicrobial properties.  

Sustainability is critical here. Urchin waste can’t be dumped back into the ocean, and not every landfill will take it—it’s fish waste, and it’s pretty stinky stuff. So, if there’s something valuable in the waste that we can use, it’s a huge logistic and economic benefit. There’s big potential to create new value streams from underutilized species and to make both an economic and environmental difference.

The media often speaks about the gap between scientists and policymakers. What advice do you have for young researchers aiming to make an impact in nutrition and metabolic health, particularly when it comes to communicating their findings to the public and policymakers? 

People should seize any opportunity to share their research, presenting information in bite-sized chunks that are easy for people without advanced degrees in nutrition or exercise physiology to understand. Simple outreach activities, like community talks or “meet the researcher” events, can be very effective. If you aren’t offered opportunities, set them up yourself. Pitch your research, organize a talk at your institution, send some cold emails. And never turn down a media opportunity.  

Also, importantly, do some media training beforehand. This step is critical. You don’t need extensive training but you do need enough understand the media and how to translate “science-speak” into language people can understand. 

You can often find media training is offered through your university, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), or other funding agencies. It’s essential for explaining how publicly funded research impacts public policy and the public. 

I’ve always tried to take on interesting opportunities. For example, when I was in the UK, I was approached by a producer from the BBC show Trust Me, I’m a Doctor. We collaborated on an episode where we conducted a study on the impact of consuming oats. The study looked at whether people who didn’t typically consume oats would experience a reduction in cholesterol levels after eating oats for 30 days. It was an open-label population study, and we had a full episode dedicated to it. It was a great outreach piece to showcase the work we do in my lab and demonstrate how findings apply to real-life situations.  

Any chance you get to speak helps combat misinformation from “influencers” without expertise in the field. There are prominent figures online with no background in health research, yet people follow their nutritional or health advice. It’s scary and, frankly, dangerous. We need educated voices to combat the noise.