US gluten-free product sales

As Americans have bought more gluten-free products, WeChat has gained more monthly active users in China, a correlation of 0.994 that connects American dietary anxiety to Chinese social media with the breezy confidence of a data point that does not recognize national borders. The gluten is removed in Whole Foods, the messages are sent in Shenzhen, and the chart makes no distinction between a rice flour cracker and a red envelope. Both numbers go up. Neither cares about the other.

Gluten-free product sales grew from about 2.5 billion to over 7 billion dollars between 2013 and 2022, driven by celiac awareness, the wellness industry, and the cultural conviction that gluten is suspicious. WeChat users grew from about 400 million to over 1.3 billion during the same period, as the app became China's essential super-app for messaging, payments, and daily life. Both are smooth growth curves in their respective markets, powered by entirely different forces: one by American dietary fads, the other by Chinese smartphone adoption. The correlation is a product of their identical shape—two S-curves in the same decade.

Ten years of gluten-free products and WeChat users is a correlation that spans the Pacific and means nothing on either shore. American intestines and Chinese social networks grew in parallel because both were in their expansion phase during the same decade. The gluten is avoided, the messages are sent, and the chart connects them with the serene irrelevance of mathematics. The bread is free. The app is essential. The correlation is neither.