Per capita cheese consumption in the USUS pet food total market sales
It is, by now, a recurring theme of these graphs: Americans eat more cheese, Americans buy more pet food, and the two have walked in step for two decades (r = 0.958). The household expands its shopping list in both human and canine directions with the same cheerful consistency. The refrigerator holds both; the dog, gracefully, overlooks only one.
US per capita cheese consumption rose from about 30 pounds in 2002 to over 41 pounds by 2022, with the category's slow drift from accent to main-ingredient in American meals; pet food sales grew from about $11 billion to over $50 billion in the same window, with humanization pushing fresh, frozen, and direct-to-consumer brands into the mainstream. Both are stories of the food industry expanding into premium SKUs for every mouth in the household, human or otherwise. The average American household in 2022 spent more on pet food per month ($68) than the average household spent on cheese ($24), which would have struck a 1980s grocery shopper as a clerical error.
More cheese on more dinners. More salmon in more bowls. The family, widely defined, is fed.
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