Per capita margarine consumption

Formula 1 US TV viewership and US per capita margarine consumption have, between 2017 and 2022, moved in near-perfect opposition at r=-0.994. As Americans have discovered Formula 1, Americans have abandoned margarine. These two trends are not connected, but together they tell a kind of culinary and cultural tale of the modern American table.

Formula 1 US viewership exploded from roughly 500,000 average viewers per race in 2017 to over 1.2 million by 2022, driven largely by the Netflix series Drive to Survive that dramatized the sport for American audiences. Per capita margarine consumption declined from around 2.5 pounds per person annually to under 2 pounds in the same window, continuing a long-running retreat as butter regained cultural and dietary preference and alternative spreads diversified. The two trends reflect entirely separate cultural shifts — one in sports media consumption, one in fat choices — moving in opposite directions on the same calendar.

Six years of inverse movement can describe two completely separate consumer shifts on the same timeline. The race and the margarine tub are not connected. Both are, however, in retreat or in rise for their own reasons.