American cheese imports and American choking deaths on food, both climbing. The unkind reading is unfair; the kind reading is just a coincidence. Both lines are mostly powered by completely unrelated demographic and trade dynamics.
US cheese imports grew across this window as European specialty-cheese demand expanded and trade-deal access (especially from EU producers) widened. Choking deaths on food climbed almost entirely as a function of an aging population: most such deaths involve adults over 65, and the over-65 cohort grew from 36 to over 55 million people. Two completely unrelated lines sharing a window because the same seventeen years inflated both specialty-cheese trade and the demographic that drives the choking-death statistic.
An aging country imported more cheese. The cheese is, mostly, not the cause of the other line.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Choking deaths on food in the US” vs “US cheese imports” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
