Ep 142: Expanding Maternal Healthcare with Jennifer Jolorte Doro

Whatever the nature of your fertility journey, you’re bound to face some stressful decisions and the truth is that we could all use some extra support. One of the areas where American moms could really use a helping hand is in the realm of nutrition. That’s where Chiyo comes in, a personalized meal delivery service for new moms that integrates Eastern food therapy with Western nutrition! Joining us today is Chiyo Cofounder and Chief Culinary Officer, Jennifer Jolorte Doro, to discuss the founding of Chiyo, the programs they’ve developed, and how they are prioritizing accessibility to bring maternal nutritional care to families across the country. We delve into the role of traditional Chinese medicine in their recipes, the concept of food as medicine, their fertility-focused program, and why giving the gift of nutritional peace of mind can serve as a beautiful gesture of support for moms and families. To hear the full scope of our conversation with Jennifer on fertility, maternal health care, nutrition, and more, tune in today! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:13

Hi everyone. We are Rina and Dara and welcome to Fertility Ford . We are part of the wellness team at RMA of New York , a fertility clinic affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Our Fertility Ford Podcast brings together advice from medical professionals, mental health specialists, wellness experts, and patients because knowledge is power and you are your own best advocate.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Jennifer Jte . Doro is the co-founder and chief operating chef of Geo , a personalized and integrative food as medicine meal delivery service, born and raised in Southern California to Filipino parents. Jennifer Jor TE Doro is using Eastern Food Therapy to change how we nourish mothers in America as a clinical nutritionist. Woo-hoo , postpartum chef, certified birth doula and lactation counselor by training ate Doro provides a spin on what nutritious meals should look like for women from fertility to postpartum in a way that's still exciting and discovery driven . She holds a BA in political science and history of public policy from the University of California Santa Barbara and a Master's of Science and Nutrition with a concentration in clinical nutrition from the Maryland University of Integrative Health. Jennifer, we are really, really excited to have you on today. We have so many questions. Yes , thanks for being here.

Speaker 3: 1:36

So excited, so, so excited. Happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:39

A COC , chief Operating Chef. I love it .

Speaker 2: 1:43

So cute. <laugh> . I had to double. I took a double take. I'm like, did she really say that? Wow. That's brilliant. Well , I think

Speaker 3: 1:50

Nowadays too , I also say like chief culinary officer sometimes too.

Speaker 1: 1:54

Well they're both very exciting to me. So

Speaker 3: 1:57

<laugh> ,

Speaker 1: 1:58

Tell us, tell us about the magic that you have created with Chio . So excited. The menu, I mean it's , it's so unique and different.

Speaker 3: 2:05

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so essentially, wow, it's been probably, I've been in kind of maternal wellness now for close to eight years. Very much started in kind of pre postnatal yoga, then got my master's and then started a actually like a postpartum chef service. And so essentially I was already kind of practicing this in homes in New York City, different families, whether that was preparing for labor and delivery and then obviously once their postpartum period really kind of guiding them and supporting them through, you know, what kind of meal prep at that point looked like. Obviously during that time it was very much like a private chef service. So quite expensive and like very intimate. I was in people's homes and in their kitchens like seeing them every day . So it was very a unique and beautiful experience. And actually obviously Covid came, which was also a very interesting experience. And about that time, Irene and I, my co-founder and who was our CEO met around August of 2020. And so she had really gotten inspired by, one of her aunts actually had a baby and she was kind of then really introduced to the idea of like postpartum care and what does that look like. And very much from like a traditional Chinese medicine lens really got exposed to really specific ingredients and herbs and soups and just like a philosophy that didn't seem at the time something that people really knew about. And so during that time Irene and I connected, we had some mutual friends and she had this idea and was kind of like, is this something that you would be interested in? And obviously it was something that I'd been doing and I was really excited to be able to make this experience more accessible. Again, it was typically a private chef service or even as like postpartum doulas kind of do and have this type of support. Really our goal even then, this was in 2020 of really making this type of postpartum care, nutrition, knowledge, education really accessible to a lot of people who maybe have not even knew that postpartum could be a different experience essentially.

Speaker 2: 4:27

You guys were the first people really like I was so impressed. Yeah, like four years ago I started receiving emails from the company and really I feel like you are, you guys are spearheading this, this new wave, which I think is pretty incredible. But I'm curious about the name Chio , what's that all about? Is there any relation to fertility or or wellness or postpartum? So

Speaker 3: 4:49

Chio is a Japanese baby name that actually means thousands of generations. And so at the time I think we, we had talked about a little bit, we had started out as Nori and it was really a , a name that Irene had kind of thought of and we weren't tied to it. And so I think when we were kind of looking into, you know, new branding, a new name kind of came along with it and we were really researching and looking for something that we thought could really encompass the brand. And this especially we talk about how we are nourishing future generations, obviously first through the mother, then through the baby, but then in turn we also have grandparents that gift or like brothers and sisters. And so it really just becomes this really intergenerational experience that really does feed many generations.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Oh that's so beautiful. I love that. Very meaningful.

Speaker 2: 5:44

So nice. I love, I received one of your pamphlets and I love something that's written in there is chio is like joining a family and like that's a perfect way of describing that. It's, it's really, and it's interesting that you say that it's not necessarily just meant for a mother, it appears as though it could be meant for so many others. So I would love to hear from you who really is this program meant for?

Speaker 3: 6:07

Yeah, so we definitely serve, postpartum has always been like our MVP our our main product for a really long time. And then we started to get a lot of customer feedback where then folks who you know, maybe used just postpartum were then starting to think about conceiving again or then becoming pregnant again and kind of just coming through this life cycle with us again. And so that was obviously so exciting and so beautiful for people to want to use us again. And so a lot of our clients used to ask us like, when are you going to have like a fertility program or like a hormonal balance program or a pregnancy program? And so really that's kind of where it started. We care so much about our clients, our customers. We do so many whether it's like surveys or in-person events to really get a sense of like what they're looking for from us. And so that's really how we got started into fertility and we were just so excited to really dive deep and very much right now we've like scratched the surface in terms of our programs but we do have a good amount of folks who do order, whether that's partners, maybe male partners who have heard that they need to boost their fertility to then even people who are really kind of starting their hormonal balance journey or or even egg freezing at a, at a younger age than than normal or usual.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Tell us also about your menu too. So how do you source the menu? What kind of foods do you use? How do you choose how, what makes it sort of fertility focused ?

Speaker 3: 7:43

Yeah, so a lot of what we've done is obviously just diving to any of the recent research on egg health, sperm health, also tying in traditional Chinese medicine. So that philosophy is provided to us by our TCM advisor, Dr. Lily who really specializes in fertility, pregnancy and postpartum. So she helps advise us with our herbal broths and tonics and just introduces us to this kind of educational philosophy that might be new to maybe a more western audience. So simple principles like eating warming foods or kind of bringing warmth back to your uterus. Um, that's really helpful essentially in like implantation and even just like menstrual health, the approach is quite different than perhaps like a traditional way of thinking about your period, right? I think traditionally or even just growing up like hated my period, didn't love it, always had heavy periods, didn't really understand what that meant. But in a traditional Chinese medicine lens, your menstruation is actually your fifth vital sign. It's, it's a vitality of life and even the quality, quantity, color, et cetera, those are all things that can actually be modified by diet or rest or acupuncture, herbs, things like that. So really starting to teach our audience about some of those aspects and then obviously bringing just kind of , you know , nutritional research towards it. So for example, thinking about key nutrients like selenium for example, when we have clients that are looking to boost like their egg health, we talk about okay hey we actually have this like amazing Brazil nut granola, the maranga milk, so high antioxidants, you know, a single Brazil nut can help achieve like your selenium status or lycopene for example, connecting it back to our male client that really helps with like anti, it's like an antioxidant helps with like fertility in med and sperm motility. So depending on who the client is, we do offer also like one-to-one consults so they can get a better sense of like what their goals are and like how our program can be catered to them as well. Oh that's fabulous .

Speaker 1: 9:59

And also now I'm really hungry for your yoga

Speaker 2: 10:01

<laugh>. I know I tried one of your, I think it was like an energy ball, it was so delicious. I mean it was so good. Mm-hmm <affirmative> , I love that you that you marry the eastern and western approaches like the eastern philosophy. But I think it's really what makes you unique is is that eastern philosophy but also bringing in the science and the research that unfortunately still more western. You know, I think we're seeing some more research done towards eastern philosophy but you're really bringing them both together and having yourself as a dietician and also the doctor together to really make sure that it is backed by science I think is really important and makes it that much more credible that way. I think it's, it's a really nice marriage between the two.

Speaker 3: 10:47

Yeah and I think that so many of our clients as we've tried to improve our curriculum for example or just like our materials on how we educate them on this process, it's interesting because I know we had one client who really had a difficult time conceiving. She did use a clinic she's based out in like the Colorado area, but she had mentioned to me that when she was reaching out to her clinic and asked was there anything else that I can do for my egg health, that clinic in particular was like, oh no you're fine. And I think like a lot of these, right, like a lot of these clients like do wanna do everything in their power that they can and like how do they even like navigate resources or different tools And I think that there's so much out there that can really support people and there's so much that they can't control. But if there's something they can control, like why not empower them?

Speaker 2: 11:40

Yeah. Food is medicine and I think especially I'm speaking for people living in New York 'cause that's where I'm based, but New Yorkers, at least what I see with my patients is that busy working people don't, don't have a lot of time and or patience or maybe even the room in their apartment <laugh> to cook. Like how many people actually don't use their ovens to cook. They might store things in it, you know? So just the , the notion of having

Speaker 3: 12:06

Situation <laugh> ,

Speaker 2: 12:10

I leave half of my kitchenware in my oven and so like it's a pain in the, but each time I have to take it out to cook. But just people want the flexibility and want sometimes the work to be done for them so to speak. But also what's so great about Chio is that you provide such a nice variety of foods and especially like foods that a lot of people have never heard about.

Speaker 1: 12:30

Yeah , you're many

Speaker 3: 12:32

Like that . Oh thank you. Like I think that's a little bit of where we talk about we wanna make nutrition fun and discovery driven is like we want to introduce you to new foods that maybe you've never seen before or heard of. And they're also very nutritious and very helpful for whichever stage you're trying to tackle at the time. And I think there's so much that can be learned and I think so much that is typically the clickbait that's out there or like the doctor googles or like the Reddits is like a lot of like scary information and like it doesn't have to be that way. Like I think there's also a world where like people can find the information that they wanna find. It doesn't feel restrictive, it doesn't be feel like fear mongering versus like can you eat this? Yes. To what extent. But I think a lot of people are looking for then that type of guidance versus feeling like anxiety and fear of like, oh my gosh, am I doing the wrong thing? Where it's like probably not. Like it just needs to be presented in a different way, which is definitely one of our goals.

Speaker 1: 13:36

I think what's great too about what you do is for someone that's on a fertility journey, whatever that means, right? Maybe they're trying naturally or whether they're doing assisted reproductive technology, it's really stressful and it's another element to think about. It's another element to try and manage in your life. And so when you can outsource the nutrition aspect, which so many people, as soon as they start thinking about conceiving, they start to think about nutrition. And so when they can outsource that to a trusted and reputable source and feel like, okay, I'm putting that in the hands of like chio , right, you're gonna take care of me. It takes it off their plate and so then they can say other things , which is great.

Speaker 3: 14:12

Yeah, a hundred percent couldn't say it better. <laugh>.

Speaker 2: 14:15

I mean I love also that like you guys aren't afraid to, to serve tofu, which you know, I was thinking about that when you were saying, you know, you can read a lot of scary information, you can find it all on the internet and I think there's a lot of scare tactics and it's so, it's so nice to see that you guys provide evidence-based research of what can be helpful. You have a whole section on this book, I'm obsessed with your materials that you give out to people, you know when you send food. But like a list of key ingredients and it really does help educate people not only about different foods that could be helpful fertility for for fertility, but you're actually explaining what are the, the nutrients that are in them, how can be helpful, what types of, how can it can address some common symptoms. So like for you, I , I also love that you guys speak a lot about bowel health, which I think oh all the

Speaker 3: 15:05

Time . That's like my super question <laugh> Me

Speaker 2: 15:08

Too, me too. I think people are so afraid to talk about that but your bowels are a great indicator of your overall health.

Speaker 3: 15:15

A hundred percent. Yeah. It's a question that I ask all the time, especially to, to your clients, right? Like I wanna get an understanding of like you say the right things, right? And like you're telling me, oh I do this and this and this and it's like okay, how regular are your bowel movements? What do they look like? Or like you say you drink a lot of water but like your bowel movements are telling me otherwise. So it's just like, you know, you can really dig deep by asking some kind of straightforward, simple questions. But it's interesting to, I think, and I'm sure you see this all the time where people want to tell you the right things, but it's like I also want to just know like how to help you, right? Mm-Hmm <affirmative> . So like regardless if you're telling me like, oh actually I do x, y, z, it's like you're coming to me for a reason. So like let's, let's talk about it.

Speaker 2: 16:04

Let's be real,

Speaker 3: 16:05

Right? The

Speaker 1: 16:06

A way to, to get better or you know, to find out information about yourself.

Speaker 3: 16:10

A hundred percent.

Speaker 2: 16:11

I think the hard part is a lot of people don't wanna be judged but little, I would think someone who's there to support you is not there to judge you. They're there to help you make the best choices within what you feel comfortable doing and you know, working with your lifestyle. But it's interesting that you say that 'cause I do feel like sometimes I get people telling me all the things that they think I wanna hear and then it's like it doesn't necessarily always translate to right how they're feeling per se or or what's going on. So it's, yeah, and

Speaker 3: 16:43

I think to your point, like we, and even just like in our branding or our messaging, I was really focused on everything to be very warm, just even like in the colors and then the imagery because I wanted people to feel like we are your nutrition authority, but also like your best friend. Like this is someone who I think you would want to come to for loss, to having a baby to anything and everything in between, which is why it was so important for the colors to just feel warm, like a warm hug or even just the way that we designed the logo to be very curvy. And again, really just kind of focusing on like we want to be the authority but also we want you to trust us, which is so important. I think, you know, even if you think about when you've had those hard times, like who do you end up messaging? Who do you end up texting? And you've been really fortunate that our clients are really sharing a lot of really amazing life changes and details with us and we wanna hold their hand every step of the way. Oh that's so , so beautiful. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 17:50

It's great. I really do feel like you've created this community around wellness, around food and delicious food too. I, I love also the seasonality. I believe it was yesterday, maybe I received, maybe it was a couple days ago, I received my weekly, I think it's called edit and it's very seasonal and it usually via email, it talks about a new food or a new ingredient of the week and it's always exciting. I really do look forward to the email. Oh good .

Speaker 3: 18:17

<laugh> .

Speaker 2: 18:19

So I , I'm interested to hear about what do you hope to see Chio be coming and I also with that, I know you guys I believe started more locally around New York but you've expanded so I would love you to share with our listeners who can purchase your surfaces and you know, where is it accessible?

Speaker 3: 18:34

Yeah, so when we first started it was funny, I think a little bit of our story was yes it was Covid and I remember us just thinking like, okay, we're gonna start out with just Manhattan, right? We're only gonna deliver there. And then obviously with Covid people started to move, people were moving out of the city and so it was like okay, maybe we need to start our pilot further to New Jersey, Connecticut, Brooklyn, Queens, et cetera. So to our core we do deliver locally and by locally we mean Connecticut, New Jersey, and then obviously New York, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Bronx up to Westchester and we've started shipping nationwide about a year ago. So we do, we've shipped not quite to all 50 states. We don't, 'cause we ship overnight so we don't ship to like Hawaii or Puerto Rico or Alaska, but we've reached a majority, I would say 40 ish out of 50 states. Wow . Where folks have ordered from us. And it's been so beautiful to see I think maybe some of these areas where they don't have maybe such a concentration of like maternal wellness resources, right? Like mom groups and things like that. But they do have people who are just like starving for these types of resources. So places that you wouldn't even think about. I remember I was so excited to see like the Dakotas, right? Like oh wow, like someone out there has heard about Chio and they ordered it like that is amazing. And so I think that type of reach has been just so fundamental, again, being able to serve the areas that like probably don't have such great hubs like you know, maybe in LA or New York, Miami or Austin, Chicago, things like that. Even just outside of those metropolitan cities. But we do ship nationwide again, I mentioned even as like a great gift we've had family members kind of pull in and although they maybe can't be there or supporting their family members in different ways, whether it's a gift card or or purchasing a plan for them . But I think people are starting to realize that there are other ways to support family members besides diapers or a swaddle. That's amazing. So you're really sort

Speaker 1: 20:46

Of nationwide, which is so cool.

Speaker 3: 20:49

It definitely has its challenges <laugh> , but very exciting to see all the different people that order for sure.

Speaker 2: 20:55

And also so nice. I think that's a great idea that you mentioned, you know, a lot of times after someone you know gives birth the notion of okay, what can we get them? They can get, you know, a bassinet or a stroller but like what about the mom who's just gone through so much? I think that's a really novel gift idea. Yeah . I love , love for preconception.

Speaker 3: 21:15

Oh for sure. Like we haven't seen any gifting there, but I think what we have seen though and is something that is so important to us is maybe your friend that has had a loss, like what does that kind of support look like? Right? Like sometimes you don't even know how to navigate the conversation or you feel like you wanna send flowers or like a nice, but like something that we're working on is like what does that look like to support your friend? Right. In a very like simple way of like, I've been thinking about you. So that's something that we've been thinking through and I think even just from where we started to where we are today in terms of like other products that like might help specific stages, specific symptoms, that's something that's always kind of like on our radar. But then also kind of working on what our nutrition platform will look like, how people are interacting with the information. Again, people are really asking us a lot of different nutritional based questions or just even looking for resources. So we're super excited to be able to kind of like pull of that , all of that information in a really easy accessible way. My biggest thing is like so many people are like reaching out to Dr . Google and like Doc, I always say like Dr . Google is not your friend. Like, like you should definitely reach out to a practitioner who can like really give you the answers that you're looking for versus kind of deep diving into these forums where a lot of the information maybe can be helpful but like also I feel like very scary and daunting and isolating.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Totally. And also they don't know you or your profile or your specific needs. So yeah, it is very important to work with someone that knows you and can really look at your particular makeup.

Speaker 3: 23:00

Definitely.

Speaker 2: 23:01

That's a good point. Wow. So that's exciting, that definitely expanding. I love that idea. I think the notion of really trying to cater to catering to people prior to a pregnancy, I think it's great to market somehow even like I think it could be a great, whether it's a birthday gift or even you know, someone who's experienced a loss, you know, for a Mother's Day gift perhaps. You know, some sort of, I think that's like such a , a nice thing to think about. I think showing love through food is such a nice way of showing that you care <laugh> .

Speaker 3: 23:35

Yeah, totally. Food is definitely one of my love languages, so I'm excited for people to think about it in that way too. That you really can show someone that you really care through food and again, food that is good for you. Again, I think there's so many instances where there are ways to gift that type of care and for people to like start to realize that,

Speaker 1: 24:02

Oh that's so beautiful. I love that.

Speaker 2: 24:04

So nice. So how can people, what's the best way that people can find you specifically and also cheo in in general? Yeah , Instagram

Speaker 3: 24:13

Handles . Um , yeah, so our website is, we are cheo.com . Our Instagram is the same at We areo my email. If you ever wanna email me jennifer@wearecheo.com, I'd love to hear from you. I think especially at the stage that we're in we're , we are always excited to learn about other companies and partner with other like-minded companies. So would love to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 24:36

Well thank you so much for coming on and sharing about cheo and what a fabulous product, what a fabulous community you've created and we can't wait to see where you take it. I feel there are so many ways and we're so happy to be able to spread the the word about this awesome, very nurturing thing you've created for our community.

Speaker 3: 24:56

Yeah, thank you so much. It's been an honor to be here.

Speaker 1: 24:59

So how we like to end our podcast are a note of gratitude. So something that you are grateful for today.

Speaker 3: 25:07

I think I'm grateful for my kids. I feel like, for example right now they're sick but they're so cute when they're sick and I feel like they're still like happy and there's just like the simplicity of childhood is just so nice and starting to share those moments again, right? When your day is maybe hectic and you have meetings all day and et cetera , but then coming home and they just are such full of innocence and joy and simplicity. It's really nice to like ground you again.

Speaker 2: 25:39

Mm . That's so nice. What about you Rena ?

Speaker 1: 25:43

Well of course that makes me think about my kids <laugh>. I mean, how could it not? And how grateful I am for her. Right? Just even like a drop off this morning, she just gave me extra hugs and wanted to stand outside of me while I relayed my sneakers. And yeah, I think they just give you a sense of purpose and grounding and I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful one. So I'm gonna go with that. What about you Dara ? Well,

Speaker 2: 26:11

I definitely then have to piggyback on both of you ladies. Kids are interesting. I, I think that kids are quite real and honest. They give it to you really straight. And I think it's something that we can all learn from. I do really feel like they can be mentors in our life too. We often think of like we need to have, right? Like we need to have someone older and wiser to really give us that wisdom. But I think that children really do kind of bring it down to like bare bones, they simplify things and they don't complicate things and they get over things quite quickly. They show their emotions, you know, good, bad, ugly. So I am going to also say thank you for little ones to help keep us young hopefully. And also be great reminders to live our life to the fullest.

Speaker 3: 27:00

Yeah. Love that. Well thank you so much. Yes, thank you again.

Speaker 4: 27:06

Thank you so much for listening today. And always remember practice gratitude, give a little love to someone else and yourself. And remember you are not alone. Find us on Instagram at Fertility underscore forward . And if you're looking for more support, visit us@www.rmany.com and tune in next week for more fertility Forward .