Per capita mozzarella consumption

As Americans have eaten more mozzarella per capita, more of them have died falling out of bed, achieving a correlation of 0.996 that sounds like the setup for a very specific class-action lawsuit. The cheese stretches, the body falls, and the data connects them with a confidence that would be admirable if it were not entirely misplaced. Seventeen years of mozzarella and mattress-related mortality, correlated to within a fraction of a percent. The pizza topping is innocent. The statistics are not.

Per capita mozzarella consumption has risen steadily as pizza consumption, caprese salads, and artisan cheese culture expanded—Americans now eat over 12 pounds of mozzarella per person per year, up from about 9 pounds in 2005. Bed-fall deaths rose with the aging population. Both metrics are smooth upward curves: mozzarella grows because pizza grows, and bed falls grow because the elderly population grows. The correlation is a product of their identical shape—two lines going up at the same steady rate—not of any relationship between dairy and gravity.

A correlation of 0.996 between mozzarella and bed-fall deaths is the kind of statistic that makes headlines and means nothing. The cheese melts on the pizza, the elderly slide off the mattress, and the connection between them exists only in the geometry of two upward-trending lines. The mozzarella is perfectly stretched. The correlation is perfectly meaningless.