Cottage cheese is trending on TikTok for ice cream. is it good?
What you need to know about the cottage cheese trend. (Illustration by Jay Sprogell for Yahoo / Photo: Getty Images)
The latest food trend may seem like a throwback — or, possibly, your grandma’s favorite snack.
Cottage cheese has taken over, with food creators experimenting with different ways to eat the often-controversial dairy product. One benefit of cottage cheese, according to those who praise it, is the food’s high protein content.
First, what is cottage cheese?
“Cottage cheese is a type of cheese that is known for its lumpy or curd-like texture,” explains registered dietitian Jordan Hill of Top Nutrition Coaching. “It is made by coagulating milk with an acidic substance, such as lemon juice or vinegar, and then separating the curds from the whey. The curds are the solid portions of the milk that clump together, while the whey is the liquid portion that is drained off.”
Between 1950 and 1975, cottage cheese was all the rage, according to a 2015 NPR segment titled “The Fall Of A Dairy Darling: How Cottage Cheese Got Eclipsed By Yogurt.” At the time, cottage cheese was often used as a base for fruit like pineapple or peaches, and eaten for breakfast. In 1970, Americans ate a whopping five pounds of cottage cheese per year — but despite its initial popularity, the product was eventually eclipsed by its dairy cousin yogurt.
No one knows the exact reasons for this shift, but one possible explanation is that it’s difficult to get consistent quality when it comes to cottage cheese, while another suggests that cottage cheese simply seems too “old-fashioned” for marketers to invest in, per NPR. Of course, that was before the TikTok crowd discovered it and made it cool again.
Meet cottage cheese, 2.0
While there have been scattered cottage cheese recipes over the years, the cottage cheese trend really seemed to pop off around March 2023.
The popularity of cottage cheese today seems connected to the rise in high-protein diets. While social media…
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