Pumpkin spice products on shelves

Between 2005 and 2021, pumpkin spice products multiplied across American retail shelves with the relentless optimism of a seasonal phenomenon that has forgotten how to be seasonal, while choking deaths on food tracked upward alongside them at an r of 0.97. The most alarming reading of this data is that pumpkin spice has become so ubiquitous that Americans are literally choking on the stuff. A more measured reading is that both numbers went up for seventeen years, which is what numbers do when a population grows older and corporations grow bolder. The cinnamon, for what it is worth, is not the problem.

Choking deaths on food in the US have risen steadily, driven primarily by the aging of the population — adults over 65 account for the majority of fatal food choking incidents due to age-related dysphagia and medication effects. Pumpkin spice product proliferation grew from a single Starbucks latte in 2003 to thousands of SKUs by the 2020s, as manufacturers discovered the premium pricing power of seasonal flavoring. Both trends are sustained upward curves across the same seventeen-year window: one measuring a demographic reality, the other a marketing triumph. They share a timeline and nothing else.

A population aging into higher choking risk and a flavor trend aging into cultural dominance will always produce a tidy correlation when measured across the same period. The pumpkin spice did not cause the choking; the calendar caused both.