Socials and cottage cheese
Image: Grey Dushik (grey_and)/Shutterstock
The rise of TikTok and other platforms has given rise to new trends for cheeses, some of which are from past times. Take, for instance, cottage cheese. According to The Knowledge Bank research, cottage cheese, has seen its popularity surge among younger, health-conscious British consumers, due to increased coverage on social media. Its creamy texture, alongside nutritional benefits such as a high protein content, have hit home with TikTok and Instagram users, where there is a growing trend among food influencers to transform it into almost anything, from cookies to ice cream, the analysts say.
Anne-Laure Farrar, UK market insight manager from The Knowledge Bank, explained: “The importance of viral trends cannot not be denied, and witnessing some varieties blow up in popularity thanks to TikTok and Instagram is brilliant as it can breathe new life into long-established products which have been able to capture a new audience.”
Sales in Scotland reflect this, where cottage cheese has outperformed other soft cheese varieties in growth – representing 14.1% in sales and 12.7% in volume respectively. Since May last year, Stirlingshire-based Graham’s Family Dairy noted a 40% rise in cottage cheese sales – to levels not seen since the 1980s – and attributed them to this rise in demand for high-protein products, retro trends, and viral social media posts.
I have long enjoyed cottage cheese, and often used it as a ricotta substitute in the past, when the latter wasn’t available in the shops. I eat dinners such as a jacket potato, topping it with cottage cheese, chives and a tinned anchovy. I often ate cottage cheese out of the tub, pausing only to throw a chunk or two of peach or pineapple in.
Lately, I have not bought it, just because I seem obsessed with other cheeses such as blues on salads and blue cheese stuffed into figs with honey. Not to mention Pecorino Romano over everything, and cream cheese and smoked salmon on bagels. But I think today a day for buying more cottage cheese – let’s hope they have it in the shops.
- Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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