It started with a pasta dish. Cherry tomatoes tossed with olive oil and placed in a baking dish with a block of feta cheese. Everything gets baked up until the tomatoes burst and the feta melts, enabling it to be mixed up into a quick sauce with minced garlic, basil, crushed red pepper and pasta.

Dubbed the TikTok pasta, the easy-to-make baked feta pasta recipe became a viral sensation on social media platforms in 2021, ushering in a phenomenon of content creators sharing dishes that are easy to make, aesthetically pleasing and often boast high nutritional value.

The recipe also put dairy at the center – quite literally – a common theme with many of today’s popular social media-inspired recipes. Easy to use, accessible and high in protein, dairy has taken center stage – or in this case, center screen.

Getting creative

When it comes to food-centric videos on social media platforms, the sky is the limit. Some of these videos have racked up more than 4 billion views, bringing attention to every meal of the day, from breakfast to dinner, midnight snacks and everything in between.

Research into consumer psychology and the social sciences has shown that novelty is essential for anything to go viral on social media. The more novel the food, the more likely it is to go viral. This makes innovation especially important, as it is key for gaining traction among social audiences.

Among the notable trends of the past year, fruit roll-up wrapped ice cream was a standout. Despite being messy to make and to eat, the unexpected crunch as the roll-up hardened around the ice cream bite was the big selling point for many who tried it. The combination also opened up possible flavor mashups, such as strawberry vanilla or blue raspberry mango.

One of the biggest drivers in many dishes was cheese. It was part of some of the biggest dairy-forward trends of the last year, including “Chickles,” a pan fried dill pickle spear wrapped in provolone cheese, originally from Claire Snyder on TikTok.

“I don’t care if anyone says this is gross,” she said in the original video. “It’s amazing.”

Eggs are a staple in many breakfast dishes, but when cookbook author Grace Elkus showed off a fried feta egg, it became a game-changer for early risers. The quick-to-make dish consisted of frying an egg in a ring of crumbled feta cheese, and serving on toast or tortillas, making it popular among people looking for an added protein boost to start their day.

In fact, much of the consumer demand for feta cheese in recent years has been social media-driven, said Amie Wentz, Emmi Roth’s director of brand management.

The baked feta pasta introduced about 1.4 million consumers into the feta category. Jenny Englert, marketing director for Saputo USA, cited the enormous role #bakedfetapasta and other viral social media trends have played in feta’s surging popularity.

The #bakedfetapasta tag garnered 108 million views on TikTok and to date has been used in nearly 10,000 videos of users making or recreating the dish. And in the weeks that followed its initial explosion on the platform, customers using Instacart ordered the recipe’s ingredients 4.6 times more than normal, Englert said. Even now, three years later, feta continues to see momentum across social channels due to its versatility in recipes, she added.

Photo: ©New Africa - stock.adobe.com

Cottage cheese shines

There’s no denying that cottage cheese is having a moment.

The product is being hailed by health conscious social media users as a high protein hero. Inventive recipes from food influencers are going viral, from cottage cheese cookie dough, and hot honey and cottage cheese toasts, to homemade “ice cream” starring the cultured ingredient.

The #cottagecheese tag surged to 814.6 million views on TikTok, significantly outperforming #sourcream (322.4 million), but still behind #yogurt (3.1 billion).

No company has benefited from the surge in cottage cheese’s popularity more than Irvine, Calif.-based Good Culture. As of July, the company recorded $135,704,535 in retail sales in the previous 52-week period, according to Circana, which is up 97.8% from July 2023.

In fact, the company’s approach to dairy’s place in the nutrition conversation may be part of the reason this often overlooked product is having a renaissance, seizing an opportunity to bring life back to the $1.1 billion category that was larger than yogurt in the 1970s.

“My co-founder Anders Eisner and I saw a major disruption opportunity in the cottage cheese space,” Good Culture chief executive officer and co-founder Jesse Merrill previously told Dairy Processing. “Cottage cheese was an overlooked superfood with more protein and less sugar than yogurt, but it lacked relevant innovation and brand appeal.”

Recent data from the International Food Information Council (IFIC) shows that most Americans are trying to consume more protein, and the desire to get more continues to rise (59% in 2022, 67% in 2023 and 71% in 2024). The data from IFIC supports the trends many organizations are seeing on the consumer level.

“The rising popularity of cottage cheese is a great example of nutrition science meeting social trends, and it creates incredible opportunities for the dairy industry,” said Ashley Rosales, a registered dietitian and nutrition and industry affairs officer for the Dairy Council of California, Sacramento, Calif. “Dairy foods contain important nutrients that support optimal health, including high quality protein.”

Photo: Good Culture

Snacking

Another driver of popular food trends comes in the form of snacks or small bites.

Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), Rosemont, Ill., works with a digital marketing agency to track consumer trends, discover what search terms people are using most often and keep up with the latest crazes. Not only are people searching for recipes online, they’re searching for them in social media, said Monica LaBelle, director of marketing communications for DMI. In-house experts find what’s popular on Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube and create a strategy to build on that.

“We saw indicators, for example, at the beginning of the year that snacking was becoming more of a part of daily life,” LaBelle said. “People were thinking less about three meals and were instead grazing throughout the day. So we adjusted our plans to accommodate snacking occasions.”

Such was the case with the #girldinner fad in 2023. Olivia Maher created a viral video about her no fuss, self-indulgent plate made up of little bites of fresh fruit and artisan cheese, which she dubbed “Girl Dinner.” The hashtag (and related audio clip) topped the charts for months to follow and is currently tagged in approximately 260,000 videos on TikTok.

Many of these popular trends also tap into one of the most crucial aspects of a social media frenzy – the visual aesthetic. Social media is all about the visuals, and for that reason many of the viral food trends have involved products that are particularly eye-catching.

Well manicured charcuterie boards have been a mainstay on social feeds for some time, but other visually appealing snack style boards have also made waves in recent years. One of the most notable (and controversial) being the butter board, which features multiple sticks of softened butter spread over a charcuterie-style wooden board with garnishes, such as edible flowers, herbs, honey and sea salt crystals.

DMI is credited with the viral butter board trend. The butter board food craze was rooted in the dairy checkoff’s marketing strategy, built to promote and increase demand of dairy foods.

“The checkoff has begun partnering with more social media influencers where we’re sharing their recipes featuring dairy on our channels,” LaBelle said. “This gives us more opportunity to target our audiences and gives us the ability to understand what people are looking for, and get the right recipe in front of them.”

Photo: Justine Doiron, via Dairy Management Inc.

Consumer education

While social media offers an opportunity to share the many uses and benefits of including dairy in one’s diet, it also gives content creators and influencers the freedom to share information, which may or may not be based in scientific fact.

Lauren Twigge, a registered dietitian who shares her knowledge on nutrition and food through her Instagram account, said there is a knowledge gap in understanding not just the processing aspect of dairy products, but all processed food.

“There is a huge negative stigma around that word ‘processing’ and it applies to lots of different industries, not just dairy,” Twigge said during Dairy Processing’s webinar, “Dairy’s Role in Health and Wellness” this past September. “I think ... that there is still a huge knowledge gap on what happens during the processing phase and there’s a need for clarity and transparency, so that these consumers can feel really confident.”

Twigge said much of it stems from some of the misinformation that can be found on platforms such as Instagram, when content paints dairy products in a certain light, regardless of the facts.

“The biggest misconceptions are still the standard ones that people have been arguing against for a long time: antibiotics and milk … animal care, food safety questions,” she said. “But they are now getting into more of this health and wellness conversation, and whether or not dairy actually supports your health.”

Twigge said it’s important for the industry, from farmers like her father, to industry associations, to continue showcasing research, so they can consume the information first-hand.

“It’s really important to remember that those who feed the world actually make up a very small population,” she said. “I talked to my dad about this all the time, because he always says, ‘I’m just a farmer. It’s it is not my problem.’ And I say, ‘It is your problem, because you have to tell your story. And you have to tell it well, because otherwise other people will tell it for you, and they’re not going to tell it right.’”

Taking advantage

With dairy getting plenty of screentime via millions of users across various social media platforms, dairy processors are presented with a prime opportunity to showcase their products directly to consumers.

Merrill said that dairy products, specifically cultured products, have everything consumers are looking for in their diets.

“The dairy space is perfectly positioned to capture today’s consumer, as dairy products are inherently clean label and nutrient dense,” he said.

Leveraging dairy’s inherent health benefits and the accessibility of many products, Rosales thinks the industry should embrace social media and viral trends to drive business and promote dairy to the masses.

“People continue to look for high protein options that are versatile, full of flavor and easily accessible,” Rosales said. “Dairy foods, like cottage cheese and yogurt, enhance both sweet and savory dishes. This makes dairy a popular choice in viral recipes for at-home cooks that are seen across broadcast platforms and social media channels.

“By showcasing both the nutritional value and convenience of incorporating dairy into everyday meals, dairy companies can leverage its popularity by continuing to engage in social media campaigns, collaborating with food influencers, and creating interactive cooking demos that inspire creativity and provide consumers with the valuable protein they need for health.”