Cottage cheese, once the domain of grandmas and fad dieters, is now the hip dairy food of Gen Z.
Let’s be honest. For years, cottage cheese seemed a little cringe. It was either something associated with 1980s diet culture (think jazzercise and leg warmers) or it was something your grandmother served as a “side salad” plopped on a piece of iceberg lettuce and topped with canned fruit.
Not anymore. Cottage cheese is one of the hottest food trends on social media, with more than 250 million views for #cottagecheese on TikTok alone. It’s turning up in everything from cottage cheese ice cream to cottage cheese bread.
A good example of the cottage cheese love is this reaction video (with nearly a million views) from TikTok influencer Natasha Bure, who swooned after tasting cottage cheese for the first time in 15 years, saying “IF COTTAGE CHEESE HAS ZERO FANS I AM DEAD. I am forever a CC lover baby.”
To all those Boomers and Gen Xers who’d thought they’d seen the last of this dairy product: Just go with it. Right now, it’s cottage cheese’s world and we’re just living in it.
Why Is Cottage Cheese Trending?
Some say that millennials and Gen Z have gotten tired of Greek yogurt, which has dominated the dairy space for more than a decade. Also, since cottage cheese has a more neutral flavor than Greek yogurt, it lends itself more to the DIY nature of younger cooks.
By blending cottage cheese with various spices, honey, fruit or other flavors, cottage cheese can go sweet or savory, and cooks can customize their cottage cheese as they like it. “Consumers are engaging a lot with new ways to use cottage cheese—whether blended and frozen as a high-protein ice cream alternative or as an ingredient in recipes such as savory breakfast toast, pasta dishes or post-workout smoothies,” Corey Christofel, cultured brand manager of Kemps dairy company, told the New York Post.
NEXT PAGE
ADVERTISEMENT
