Sales indicate that consumers continue to prefer natural over processed cheese, with slices, shreds and cubes sales getting a boost. In the processed cheese category, cheese spreads/balls was the only segment with positive sales numbers.

The natural cheese category saw dollar sales increase 0.8% to $12.8 billion and unit sales were up 3.8% to 3.8 billion, according to Information Resources Inc. (IRI), Chicago, for the 52 weeks ended Dec. 25, 2016. In the processed cheese category, dollar sales dropped 3.4% to $2.9 billion, and unit sales decreased 4.9% to 780.3 million.