Global emails sent per day

As global email volume has grown, American gluten-free product sales have grown, a correlation of 0.985 that connects the inbox to the grocery aisle with the digital-to-physical confidence of a chart that treats spam emails and gluten-free crackers as equivalent outputs of the information economy. The email is sent, the wheat is avoided, and both activities are practiced more frequently every year by people who are increasingly anxious about what they consume.

Global emails grew from about 250 billion to over 350 billion per day between 2015 and 2022. Gluten-free sales grew from about 4.5 billion to over 7 billion dollars. Both are smooth growth curves in the same digital economy: emails grow because more commerce generates more notifications, and gluten-free sales grow because the same internet enables both health information dissemination and specialty product distribution. Eight data points, both up.

Eight years of emails and gluten-free products is a correlation between two outputs of the information economy: the email that notifies you of a sale and the product you buy because the internet told you gluten was suspicious. The inbox fills, the cart fills, and both are products of the same digital infrastructure. The notification arrives. The bread is avoided. The connection is purely digital.