Experts predict we’ll buy nearly 90 million pounds of cheese for the big game.
We’re officially less than a week out from Super Bowl LIII, which airs this Sunday, February 3—and for many Americans, it’s just as much of a food-centric holiday as it is a football game. Considering the amount of nachos, buffalo chicken dip, queso, and other cheesy foods football fans will be whipping up, we’d expect supermarkets to be running light on cheese this week. What we didn’t expect was that Americans would be projected to buy 88 million pounds of cheese in preparation for the game—we repeat, 88 million (the record is 89.8 million pounds, from 2016). Apparently, both Rams and Patriots fans alike have some dairy-heavy menus on the lineup.
The stat comes from the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, who said the massive haul of cheese is enough to “cover the Mercedes-Benz Stadium football field, end zone to end zone, ten yards deep” in a statement. The organization also goes on to explain that average cheese consumption in the U.S. has “more than tripled” since 1970—so we can likely expect an even larger cheese fest in the next Super Bowls to come. (Last year, Americans bought 87.98 million pounds, according to Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin.) If you need any menu inspiration, look no further than our Super Bowl recipe roundup, which includes everything from zucchini quesadillas and pimento cheese fries, to goat cheese and chorizo rolls and a stromboli that involves two different kinds of cheese (yes, please).
Cheese isn’t the only food experiencing a Super Bowl surge this year—the National Chicken Council predicts that Americans will consume 1.38 billion chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday, as previously reported by Food & Wine. That’s 27 million more than last year, in case you were wondering, and averages out to four wings for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. (Something tells us Buffalo Wild Wings is pretty psyched about this stat). So if you have any plans to include either food on your menu this weekend, we’d suggest getting to the supermarket asap, before the masses set in.
