The National Dairy Council’s (NDC) ability to convene top nutrition researchers and subject matter experts around our common value of improving public health and wellness has been a longtime part of our annual calendar.
Our NDC-hosted roundtable gatherings allow us to discuss shared priorities related to nutrition as well as to understand what we can say based on the current body of research. They also allow us to explore research gaps that could lead to untapped dairy wellness benefits.
Along the way, these third-party experts help us look around the corner for opportunities that can help dairy be relevant to consumers’ health and wellness needs.
We held three dynamic roundtables in 2022 that related to exciting and emerging aspects of achieving wellness through including dairy foods as part of a healthy diet. Our discussions focused on:
- Dairy’s benefits in supporting healthy brain development and cognition, particularly in the first 1,000 days, from conception to just around a child’s second birthday.
- A renewed focus on helping to ensure that the growing population of aging Americans is getting proper nutrition, including their three recommended daily servings of dairy.
- Modern wellness and how healthy eating, including dairy, can potentially have a positive impact on anxiety, stress and sleep. These benefits are of special interest to younger consumers, many of whom do not meet their daily dairy recommendations and may see these emerging areas as a reason to include dairy in their nutrition routine.
To give you an idea of the expertise NDC engages with at these roundtables, here is a snapshot of attendees at last fall’s cognition meeting. Experts at our two-day session included:
- Dr. Carol Cheatham from the Nutrition Research Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who has studied how brain development supports cognition and how nutrition affects both.
- Dr. Robert Murray, an expert in pediatric nutrition, who spent his career at the Ohio State University School of Medicine.
- Dr. Yolanda Lawson, a Dallas-based OB-GYN and president-elect of the National Medical Association, the largest and oldest organization representing African-American physicians and their patients.
- Dr. Elizabeth Pearce, a renowned clinical investigator, endocrinologist and epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Medicine.
- Dr. Taylor Wallace, a nutrition and food studies professor at George Mason University.
I can’t underscore enough just how renowned and busy these professionals are. I also can’t underscore enough how committed they are to the same goals we have when it comes to believing proper nutrition and health go hand-in-hand, and dairy is an important part of the solution.
At the cognition roundtable, we explored how nutrition sets a foundation of brain development in a child’s first 1,000 days that could impact their future cognitive ability. The experts shared how much of this depends on how well a person eats during pregnancy, and even before pregnancy begins.
We discussed and dissected dairy benefits that may not be widely known to the average consumer (Figure 1). For example, iodine, which is found in milk, is recognized by the medical and nutrition communities for its role in brain development and health.
Figure courtesy of the National Dairy Council.
Choline is another essential nutrient known for its cognition benefits. Though the liver produces small amounts of choline, the rest must be obtained through the diet, and milk contributes about 8% of the daily value for choline per an 8-ounce serving. Despite its benefits, 90% of Americans and 92% of pregnant women consume below-adequate choline intake levels.
Subjects such as these and much more continue to give us the facts and proof points of dairy’s many benefits that are important to people across their lifespan. In fact, that was the emphasis of NDC’s roundtable, which focused on healthy aging.
While it’s true the dairy checkoff has many strategies to reach younger consumers, we also see the need to not overlook those on the other end of the age spectrum. It is projected that 98 million Americans (23.5%) will be 65 or older by 2060, an unprecedented level in the U.S.
Yet, a U.S. Government Accountability Office report is shedding new urgency and called for the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans to better address this life stage’s unique nutrition needs.
At this roundtable, NDC gathered more than 30 nutrition thought leaders and scientists to elevate the importance of nutrition for healthy aging. The meeting identified opportunities where core elements of dietary patterns, including dairy, can support cognition, muscular/skeletal health and the prevention of metabolic disease.
NDC has built a century-long legacy based on our role of leading credible dairy nutrition research, which is communicated by a staff of science, health and wellness experts.
But our ability to also bring key leaders to our NDC-hosted convenings provides another element of how we are further building a research-based case for dairy’s important place in healthy living.
To learn more about your national dairy checkoff, visit this website or send a request to join our Dairy Checkoff Farmer Group on Facebook. To reach us directly, send an email.
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