Choking deaths on food in the US

As Americans have consumed more chicken wings during the Super Bowl, choking deaths on food have risen, a correlation of 0.985 that is either the most specific food safety warning in this entire dataset or just two upward trends meeting at the intersection of football and the esophagus. The wings are eaten, the food lodges, and the chart draws a line between America's biggest sporting event and America's most preventable cause of death with the game-day confidence of a coefficient wearing a foam finger.

Super Bowl chicken wing consumption grew from about 1.23 billion wings in 2013 to over 1.45 billion by 2021, as the game's audience grew and wing culture became inseparable from the event. Choking deaths rose with the aging population. Nine data points, both up. Wings are not a significant choking hazard for healthy adults—the bones are a greater concern than the meat—but the correlation between a food-centric event and food-related deaths produces a coefficient that looks more alarming than it is. The wing consumers and the choking victims are largely different populations: young adults at parties and elderly people eating at home.

Nine years of Super Bowl wings and choking deaths is a correlation that sounds like a halftime health warning and is actually just a demographic coincidence. The wings are consumed by the young, the choking happens to the old, and the chart throws a flag on the play. The wings are eaten, the game is watched, and the coefficient achieves its own kind of false start.