Choking deaths on food in the US

Probiotic dietary supplement sales in the United States grew from a modest market in 2005 to a multi-billion dollar industry by 2021, and over the same 17 years, the number of Americans who choked to death on food also grew. The correlation is 0.97. The supplement industry has not, to date, marketed probiotics as choking-risk products, but perhaps this data opens a new frontier. 'Supports digestive health. Associated with increased food engagement. Please chew carefully.'

Both trends are driven primarily by population aging. Choking deaths increase with age — older adults have weaker swallowing reflexes (dysphagia) and take more medications that affect saliva production — and the US population over 65 has grown substantially since 2005 as baby boomers aged. The probiotic supplement market has also been driven substantially by older consumers focused on digestive and immune health, growing from under $1 billion in 2005 to over $7 billion by 2021. Both datasets are, at their core, charts of the aging of America.

An aging population is one of the great hidden drivers of apparent correlations in health data. When two health-adjacent metrics both trend with age, they will correlate with each other even if they have never met.