Episode 34 - How Dairy Is Critical For Kids In The First 1000 Days

DMI’s Megan Maisano and Aris Georgiadis speak with DMI’s Scott Wallin about how the checkoff is sharing dairy’s impact on children with the “First 1000 Days”. She also explains how the checkoff is promoting this research through our nutrition and health professionals and to consumers via trusted online resource centers.  

Tune in to find out!

Host & Guest:

• Host: Scott Wallin, Vice President of Farmer Communications & Media Relations, Dairy Management Inc.
• Guest: Megan Maisano, MS, RDN, Director of Nutrition & Regulatory Affairs, Dairy Management Inc.
• Guest: Aris Georgiadis, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Dairy Management, Inc.

Transcript (AI-generated, please ignore typos)

Scott Wallin   0:00  

Welcome to the your dairy checkoff podcast where we speak with checkoff leadership nationally and locally, as well as dairy farmers to discuss strategies that are driving sales and trust of us dairy as well as our dairy farmers who make it all happen. I'm Scott Wallin with Dairy Management Incorporated today, I am so excited to speak with you about a new strategy that addresses the first 1000 days of life. This is such critical information for parents who are expecting or or who have newborns at home with me today to talk about the first 1000 days strategy. Are two of my check off colleagues, Megan Maisano and Aris Georgiadis. How are you guys both doing today?

Aris Georgiadis   0:38  

Doing great, awesome.

Megan Maisano   0:40  

Yeah, happy to be here. Well, I'm so excited

Scott Wallin   0:42  

to talk about this subject. And before we get into the questions, let's start with some introductions about what you do for the dairy check off. Megan, start with you

Megan Maisano   0:50  

Sure. So I'm a dietitian, and I'm the director of nutrition and Regulatory Affairs at National Dairy Council, where, you know, I support regulatory reviews, outreach and education, and specifically help lead our first 1000 days focus for maternal and early childhood health and nutrition.

Scott Wallin   1:07  

Thanks. Megan Aris, how

Aris Georgiadis   1:08  

about you? Senior Vice President for Marketing Communications, I oversee our consumer outreach primarily, and I work very closely with Megan and the rest of the NDC team to make sure that all that wonderful science gets translated into snappy, friendly consumer content. And

Scott Wallin   1:25  

that is exactly why I love this strategy, because you are beginning with this amazing research and science that has applications for the health professionals, health and wellness communities, but yes, then your team is taking it, and there are so many ways that it applies to the consumer audience. You know, Megan, before we jump into the questions, what's the start with? When we hear about first 1000 days? What exactly do we mean? So

Megan Maisano   1:47  

Scott, it's funny before we go into that. Yesterday, in preparation for this interview, I was doing the math, and I've technically been living in the first 1000 days since the fall of 29 2019 I was pregnant with my first daughter, and continued on to have my son, and now I'm pregnant again, with twins on the way, actually. So that's nearly five years of living in this 1000 day time frame, with another two and a half to go. So I love this topic, and I'm so excited to talk with you all about it. So when I when I talk about the first 1000 days, what do I mean? We're talking about this really special time that starts during pregnancy and ends at a child's second birthday. You know, this period is really important because it's a phase of rapid growth and development, particularly for the brain, and that's why scientists emphasize that the first 1000 days are a critical time for cognitive development and an opportunity to build a strong foundation for lifelong health, even into adulthood. And what research continues to show is that nutrition is so key here our diets during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, early toddlerhood. You know, they fuel the brain during the sensitive time, and therefore can affect our ability to grow, learn and thrive in a way that can have long term effects on our health, academic achievement, even productivity in society. So, you know, there's not only incentive from a health and pediatric perspective, to invest in the first 1000 days. But also, you know, there's this economic and social motivation to support our next generation too. You know, you

Scott Wallin   3:31  

mentioned nutrition, obviously, and it's important dairy is right there, front and center as a part of this strategy. What do we know from a research and science perspective about dairy's role in the first 1000 days

Megan Maisano   3:44  

a well rounded and diverse and nutritious diet is certainly important. There are specific nutrients that are uniquely beneficial to early brain development. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics highlights 14 nutrients in their policy statement for improving nutrition during this first 1000 day time. And dairy foods provide seven of those 14 nutrients, specifically protein, zinc, choline, selenium, iodine, vitamin B, 12 and vitamin A. Now, one I really want to highlight here is Iodine. Many people don't know too much about this nutrient, but it's critical for thyroid health and early brain development. In fact, it is. Iodine deficiency is the most preventable cause of intellectual disability worldwide. You know now, iodine can only be found naturally in foods like dairy, seafood and eggs, and research shows that milk and dairy foods are the largest food contributor to our iodine intake in the US. In fact, dairy alone provides a little more than 40% of the iodine consumption in us, girls and women. So you know, for pregnant people, parents, caregivers, dairy foods are a simple. And a practical, a practical way to really hit half of these important nutrients for early brands of element, especially during the first 1000 days. So

Scott Wallin   5:07  

Aris, we mentioned, there's this amazing play now, you know, for the consumer, honest, you've got this really outstanding science and research. Can you first of all talk about the there's a coordination and process that occurs between your team in National Dairy Council walk us through what that looks like. You

Aris Georgiadis   5:23  

know, a lot of it just starts with curiosity, right? So when we hear about the work that the science team is doing, right, and we hear about the research, it often starts with what's new, like, what do we not know? Like, what's important? And I speaking for myself and for the rest of the marketing team, when we started hearing about iodine, right? You know, you think about iodine as something in salt, and then when we find out it's in dairy, and why it's important, it's like, okay, that's novel. That's not something that I think has been communicated. How do we tell that story? And then from there, I think it becomes a a process of understanding, of asking questions, of getting the teams together. I mean, I mean, I think that's one of the one of the benefits of the checkoff, right? Is it brings all these people together under the same roof, that be able to have these really important conversations and then get to the heart of what here is important. How do we tell that? How do we then shape it in a way where it becomes easy to understand so you're not overwhelming anybody trying to understand, like, Okay, well, what do I need to eat when I'm pregnant? Right? It gets very fraught with a lot of emotion. So how do we simplify it, and how do we tell that in a really exciting way?

Scott Wallin   6:30  

And your strategy stretches so far beyond just some Yeah, it's dairy Management, Inc, it's National Dairy Council, but it's also our state and regional Federation. It's all the dairy companies. Us, dairy export, Council, nutrient and then milk pep also is involved with this. Can you talk about this surround sound effort that's occurring?

Aris Georgiadis   6:47  

I think one of the things that has to happen at the at the very beginning, like to even get to the surround sound, you have to cascade this information out, right? So it's one thing when we sit down internally and get to talk to Megan and her team, and get to talk to others on the NDC side, on the research side, it's a whole other thing. Now, when you're trying to tell the Federation, right, trying to tell our partners, and so I think a lot of that work, it begins with, do we do the webinars, right? How do we explain this? How do we share this information? Now, what's, what even is the information that needs to go out there, right? So it's often starts with, how do we create content that is accessible to everybody? Where do we put that content? Right? Be it PDFs, fact sheets, resources, articles on us, dairy.com, right? So we have to build all this foundation of information first, that everybody can see and understand. We find the webinars to be critically important avenues of communicating, right? We bring everybody on board, including some of our agency partners, because they have to work with us in getting this information out there. So I think the first step in terms of, like, how we share that and how we tell that story, is just getting everybody on board, right, getting everybody on the same page. I think that's, that's number one. And I think when we talk about how, you know, when we think about surround sound, we think about what's the value that everybody can bring to the table, right? So when you mentioned milk PEP, for example, right? Milk pep could really deliver that fluid milk story, right? And talk about how, you know, fluid milk and iodine, and what that relationship is. When we talk about the SRS, we think about who they have on staff, nutritionists and dietitians who could then also shape that story for their audiences and for their local markets. They often have, you know, retail partners that they could also coordinate with. So hitting as many touch points as possible is really important, because it's not just one voice that could share this information. It really needs to come from everybody to reinforce what an important advancement this is for us to discuss. You know, I

Scott Wallin   8:50  

love that concept of you're putting a lot of drops in the bucket collectively, and I think it's incredible. You know, some things have obviously launched by now that are in market. Can you just walk us through a couple of examples of what we're what specifically we've done with this, with this strategy? Oh,

Aris Georgiadis   9:05  

sure. And this has been really exciting, because I think it's been the genesis for a lot of great work. Actually, going back to 2023 when we first started working on this and hearing about it our, you know, we worked with our agency partners to secure us some really good media opportunities, right? So we partnered at the outset with Healthline and Baby Center to kind of first introduce this idea for first 1000 days, right? And to start talking about iodine and some of the other nutrients that are found in our products. And then from there, we started seeing what kind of reaction we were getting right. The early results were so strong we thought this is something we really need to continue to build on. So this year, for example, we increased our media partnerships to include really top level, large consumer facing outlets like Hearst magazine, Hearst publications rather which includes the. At housekeeping, which is an important publication reaching parents. We have USA Today, for example, as another partner. And both of those outlets are telling our first 1000 days story. We're also working with teams to coordinate with Mayo Clinic and its website properties, where we have a parenting hub that also goes into not just first 1000 days, but everything you need to know about nutrition for your family. In addition to that, we have our influencers, our dairy Dream Team. On the dairy Dream Team, we have some parents who have a really strong following and a strong audience, and they tell such great stories and create such fantastic content. In their words, right? They're very relevant, but they speak in such a way that's engaging and really bring the really reinforce, like why nutrition is important. But they do it with their kids on camera, which is great. So you get to see them creating all this food and sharing all this food with your children. And then we have just our ongoing social our always on strategy. It's really important to hit, you know, I want to call them consumers, but they're not. They're they're parents, they're moms, their dads, they're pregnant, people who we know this is a really stressful time for them, right? You're bombarded with information, so how do you put out really fun content that kind of gives them a little bit of a laugh, maybe makes them smile, but also reinforces the important of our foods, right? So it's a way to connect like, Oh, I'm really stressed, but hey, I could enjoy this yogurt bowl or this smoothie, or here's a great recipe that I just saw, and I can't wait to try it. So I think having as much of this content out there in market, across all of our channels, is super important. The

Scott Wallin   11:43  

social media aspect of that, is this so critical? Because we know so many consumers, especially in that Gen Z audience, that's where they're going for their information. They're looking at those influencers that we are working with. So that is such a critical and important part to this. Megan, I want to come back to you and ask you a similar question, how are you taking this information now and reaching the health and wellness communities?

Megan Maisano   12:04  

You know, this topic of the first 1000 days has has really been a pillar of our team's work at National Dairy Council over the last few years, as well as the state and regional councils too. You know, we've really invested time in first diving into the research and the literature to even ourselves better understand its importance and the role of dairy nutrition. And then with that, we connected with researchers and thought leaders in the field. You know, we're educating a wide variety of audiences, from dietitians to nurses to pediatricians via, like Eric said, our webinar series, conferences, speaking engagements, but also more consumer facing channels with satellite media tours, news station interviews, and even a very cool TED talk from our president, Dr Katie Brown. And lastly, as Eris mentioned, we've launched this topic throughout social media, so we've been supporting arises, work on his channels, as well as National Dairy councils social media, and we have a new Instagram, so please check it out. And as far as how they're reacting, you know, from from my experience, I think there are three messages that are really resonating with most of these folks. And first, it's the time sensitivity of the first 1000 days, and how powerful that short window of opportunity is for long term benefits. Next, it's iodine. It's important role in early brain development and how dairy foods are, quite frankly, just an easy and reliable source of it. A lot of people don't know this. And lastly, it's how dairy foods provide seven of the 14 nutrients, so half of those nutrients are really important for early brain development. You know, for us, it just really brings home the message we're trying to hit, that dairy truly nourishes our kids, brains, bones and bodies. You

Scott Wallin   13:53  

know, I National Dairy Council been around over a century, and we built so many relationships over those years. So it's great to see the buy in in so many of these respected organizations that understand the value of dairy. And yet, here comes another benefit for them to tout, you know, to all their their audiences. Aris, if people, specifically our dairy farmers, wanted to see some this content, do you have some places where we can direct them? So

Aris Georgiadis   14:17  

I would start with us, dairy com. We have two really great foundational stories, very much following what Megan was saying. One is just that foundational piece to explain what the first 1000 days are, right? Because, just to give it some context. And then we have a second story that goes deeper into iodine and other nutrients as well. So I think you start with that really gives farmers, I think the full story and those stories also link to all the resources we have that NDC has created that's in our resource center. So fact sheets, recordings of the webinars. So that's a great start. Go talk to your grandkids or your kids. Get on Tiktok. Go follow you these channels. So. We rotate our first 1000 days content throughout UD social channels. So that would be Pinterest, it would be Tiktok, it would be Facebook and it would be Instagram. So we create videos both, you know, informational, but also what we call edutainment, right? So education with a little bit of entertainment there, because again, this is an overwhelming time, right to, you know, you're if you think about when you're on the internet and you Google, you know, pair of pants, for example, next thing you know that pair of pants is following you all over the place, right? It's the same thing. If you start Googling, like, what do I feed my kids? You're going to be overwhelmed with all sorts of, you know, links and banners. So we try to give you that moment of pause where as you're scrolling late at night because you're worried about something, one of our videos hopefully will give you a moment to calm down and say, Oh, hey, I should go have some dairy. That's

Scott Wallin   15:54  

amazing. I guess I need to check and see if pants are following me around on social media. You know, I don't want

Aris Georgiadis   15:58  

to know about your search history.

Scott Wallin   16:01  

Absolutely. You know, the beauty of this is that we're far from done. There's so much more to do. We're sort of at the beginning of this. Megan, can you talk a little bit about maybe some next steps that are that National Dairy Council is going to lead with this

Megan Maisano   16:13  

strategy? Yeah, I think we really want to keep the strong momentum going. Our team's continuing to find opportunities just to raise awareness. You know, we're working with thought leaders and social media influencers to more help just spread the word on dairy's role during pregnancy and early childhood. You know, to reach more and to teach more. And one example of this, actually, is our ambassador program at National Dairy Council. This is a team of renowned health and wellness professionals who are just champions of dairy nutrition and work with us to help educate their networks. They have been so excited about this topic and have also begun incorporating it in their in their messaging and education, and when they get asked to speak at conferences, things like that. And lastly, of course, you know, collaboration with experts on Aeris team to find, as you said, that kind of magical intersection of science and communication. Yeah, this strategy isn't going away anytime soon.

Scott Wallin   17:09  

Sarah, same question for you. What's next? Oh, I

Aris Georgiadis   17:11  

think we're just going to keep up the momentum. We're waiting for the results of some of the work that's currently in market. We anticipate it's going to be great that our partners have been excellent. They've created some really fantastic pieces of work for us. And I we're going to continue this momentum into 2025, I think one of the main things when we think about digital, right, when we think about social, is we get to see data, we get to see results, and we get to find out, like, where could we do better, right? How could we reach more people? What are the type of stories they want to hear? What are the type of videos they want to watch? So it's not just, Hey, we did this. The numbers are great. It's, how do we take that learning and bring it into the next year and keep improving and keep telling that story even better? Because that's if you don't use the data for that, then what are you using it for? Yeah,

Scott Wallin   18:03  

it's exciting to know there's so much life left on this strategy, and I think that's one of what makes it so effective. There's still so much more to do. So we're all excited to see what's next. You know, I want to finish with a question for both to be on Megan. I'm going to start with you. If you were standing before a group of dairy farmers and you wanted them to know one thing about this strategy, what's the one takeaway you wish they would take from from knowing what we're doing here?

Megan Maisano   18:26  

So I might be biased, you know, I'm a mom, I'm a dietitian, and I'm pregnant, but I I really do think this topic of the first 1000 days, along with just maternal health in general, is really gaining traction, not only in our strategy here, but among researchers, health and wellness professionals, public health initiatives and just general consumer audience. And the exciting news is that dairy nutrition plays a really valuable role in that story. So I would end with like, Thank you. The work you farmers do every day is not only nourishing our country today, but it's really investing in a healthier next generation.

Scott Wallin   19:07  

You know, obviously I'm biased as well about our National Dairy Council team. We have such an amazing group of talented people that are carrying this forward in the many ways. They are reaching the health and wellness and health professionals community. So I know they're going to keep on pushing this down the road, and there's going to be more great things to come. Eric, same question for you, if you were standing before a group of dairy farmers, what's the one takeaway you wish they knew about this? I

Aris Georgiadis   19:31  

would not be able to tell this story without the science to back it up, right? The credibility that we have because of all that fantastic research makes our storytelling that much easier, and it's amazing to be able to communicate something that we could all stand behind and feel really passionate about because of the efforts farmers do in funding all this amazing science and research, and to be able to fund teams like Megan's team, I think that's great, and it makes everything we say. Just that much stronger. And I think the second thing I would just love to tell farmers is, hey, we recognize that marketing is different today. It's different than it was 20 years ago, where you could just turn on the TV and watch an ad right to reach consumers today, especially parents. It is hard. It is fragmented out there, and I appreciate their patience and support is, you know, we're navigating a really difficult media landscape to get this message out there, and that just means a lot to me to know that we have their support. Yeah,

Scott Wallin   20:31  

and we're absolutely front and center in that new way of reaching people through different marketing strategies. It's so much more today than just watching the net on television. It is working with these influencers, and I love what you said, and really the idea that consumers still care about research and science, it still matters to them, and certainly, National Dairy Council can, can absolutely stand on many pillars in that regard. Well, those are all my questions, Aris and Megan, I cannot. Thank you enough. I really enjoyed the conversation again. I'm so excited about this strategy, and we're looking for more great things down the road. Thank you again for your time. Great. Thank you, dairy farmers. Be sure to follow this podcast on your favorite platforms, including Spotify Stitcher and iTunes. Also be sure to check out our new website, Dairy checkoff.com to find more ways that we are driving sales and trust on your behalf until next time, have a dairy. Great day you.