TikTok food trends can have real economic impact

Whether you love or hate trending TikTok food videos, they are more than just something entertaining to watch. In the aggregate, they can actually drive food producers to change their production, says Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes. This is especially true of “center of the plate” proteins (which usually means meat), but it can affect other products as well.

But with every upside comes a downside: Tyson Foods recently announced it was closing one of its processing plants because they overestimated the demand for chicken. It’s easier for producers to adjust to consumer preferences when the product can be ramped up quickly, as is the case for fast-growing chickens, but harder for something like beef because it takes two years from the birth of the calf to the processing of the heifer or steer.

Other products can be affected by these trends as well. According to Bloomberg analyst Jennifer Bartashus, the trendy food du jour is cream cheese. I don’t know if that explains the sky-high prices for Philadelphia brand cream cheese, but I had sticker shock the last time I purchased some. The increased demand also created shortages earlier this year, although other factors contributed to the cream cheese scarcity. Of course enterprising EYB Members can turn to the Library in times of shortage – there are several recipes for homemade cream cheese, including the Homemade cream cheese from Smitten Kitchen by Deb Perelman pictured above.