Choking deaths on food in the US

As energy drink sales have surged, choking deaths on food have risen in near-perfect correspondence, a correlation of 0.994 that sounds like the energy drinks are causing the choking and is actually just two things growing in the same economy at the same rate. The Red Bull gives wings. The food does not give way. The chart, as always, does not differentiate between a caffeine buzz and an obstructed airway.

Energy drink sales grew from about 3 billion to over 20 billion dollars between 2005 and 2021. Choking deaths rose as the population aged. Both are smooth upward curves, and the correlation is a mathematical certainty when two monotonic trends share a seventeen-year window. The energy drink demographic (young, active consumers) and the choking death demographic (elderly, often with swallowing difficulties) barely overlap. The coefficient is impressive and empty.

Seventeen years of energy drinks and choking deaths is another entry in the long catalog of things that correlate with the aging population. The drinks are caffeinated, the deaths are demographic, and the coefficient is a monument to the mathematical truth that two lines going up at the same time will always look related. The can opens, the esophagus does not, and the chart draws its perfect, meaningless line.