Per capita yogurt consumption in the US

It turns out that young adults moving back in with their parents correlates almost perfectly with the nation's collective decision to eat more yogurt, which is either a profound statement about the comfort foods we turn to during economic uncertainty or the universe's way of reminding us that we are pattern-matching creatures drowning in a sea of coincidental data. We wanted so badly to find meaning in the chaos that we found it in the dairy aisle.

The real culprit here is almost certainly economic anxiety working both sides of this coin. Between 2002 and 2022, housing costs spiralled upward like a malfunctioning elevator while young adults' wages largely stayed put, pushing more of them back to the parental home—but those same economic pressures also drove consumers toward cheaper, shelf-stable protein sources, and yogurt (especially Greek yogurt's explosion in the mid-2010s) fit perfectly into that niche. You could fit about 47,000 yogurt containers into an average American house, which is roughly how many times each of us has checked our bank balance while standing at the grocery store in the past two decades.

What we're really looking at is two different symptoms of the same underlying condition: a generation pricing itself out of independence and into both their parents' kitchens and the dairy cooler section. The data dutifully follows wherever we lead it, drawing lines between things that have nothing to do with each other and everything to do with the economy. We found a connection that exists, just not the one we thought we were looking for.