Editor's Letter
Dairy Foods launches its first Health and Wellness issue
Cottage cheese, yogurt and protein-rich dairy products continue gaining momentum with health-conscious consumers and GLP-1 users.
Welcome to our first Health and Wellness issue, where we present columns and stories related to what must be the biggest trend in dairy today. Dairy is in an incredible position to meet the needs of consumers adhering to the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, along with the growing number of people taking GLP-1 receptor agonists, which should further increase with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration having recently approved two GLP-1 oral pills.
As we presented last month in our "Market Trends" article, Chicago-based research firm Circana revealed two major beneficiaries of health and wellness are yogurt, whose dollar sales reached $13.1 billion for the year ending Feb. 22, a 14% year-over-year (YoY) jump, while unit sales came in just shy of 4.6 billion, a 6% YoY advancement. Cottage cheese's dollar sales topped $2 billion for the period ending Feb. 22, a YoY increase of 19%.
This month, I will focus on cottage cheese following an interesting report from the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF). "If you’re looking for an indication that dairy’s recent gains in the consumer marketplace are meant to last, cottage cheese would be a good place to start," the report begins. "Flashback to 2023, a time not so long ago. ‘Barbiecore’ ruled a pink-hued fashion scene. ‘Quiet luxury’ was in. A new drug called Ozempic seemed to hold promise. Pundits were gearing up for the Trump-Biden presidential rematch and America fell in love again with cottage cheese."
The NMPF report adds that inspired by "TikTok trends and embraced by Generation Z, cottage cheese was a meme for the cultural moment, spurring increased sales after decades of decline."
However, anyone who has spent time in the food industry can attest to the fact that some trends are simply fads that eventually dissipate. But cottage cheese clearly isn’t a "food fad that was tried and discarded. Sales that had bottomed out in 2022 at 534.6 million pints rose by 9.4 percent the next year — certainly a buzzworthy jump. But in 2024, volume rose another 12.5 percent. And in 2025, cottage cheese sales volumes jumped another 14.3 percent, to 746.6 million," NMPF states. "That, friends of dairy, is what is called a lasting trend. And an accelerating one, at that."
The trade group was quick to point out that dairy consumption overall is at its highest since the 1950s. "Butter’s at its highest since the 1960s. Cottage cheese is at its highest since… 2009. …This trend has room to grow. In 1976, as America celebrated its Bicentennial, per-capita cottage cheese consumption was 4.63 pounds, nearly twice what it was in 2024. That’s a lot of room to roam. And America’s turning 250 this year."
I have referred to these current times as the "Platinum Era" for dairy. This includes fantastic sales of yogurt, cottage cheese, kefir, butter and more. It is unknown how this era will be looked upon in the future, but it is certainly something to relish today.
"When people look back nostalgically at 2026, perhaps they won’t think of it as an era of cottage cheese — because they’ll be eating a lot more of it than we did at the time. But we will be the ones who were there for the revival, when a nutritious, nutrient-dense snack was just beginning its comeback," NMPF concludes.
We hope you enjoy this Health and Wellness Issue. I suspect this issue is also no fad, and will return next year, with perhaps more down the road.
Look for the upcoming stories below:
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