The curd is back

Cottage cheese is back. That sentence will make some people happy, others curdle.

The lumpy, misunderstood dairy product carries a lot of baggage. We remember it from childhood. Richard Nixon ate it with pineapple as his last White House meal. For decades after, we didn't have Tricky Dick or cottage cheese to kick around. Yogurt blew past it in 2010 and kept going, and cottage cheese seemed destined to fade into the back of the fridge alongside anchovies.

Then two things conspired in its favor: America's hunger for high-protein foods, married with social media and the result was a genuinely strange popular movement around cottage cheese.

The numbers tell the story. After bottoming out in 2022 at 534.6 million pints, cottage cheese volumes rose 9.4% in 2023, followed by a 12.5% increase in 2024 and another 14.3% gain in 2025. Total volume now sits at 746.6 million pints, according to research firm Circana—as reported, we are not making this up, in Dairy Herd Management.

The Economist recently validated the movement, noting that cottage cheese is also appealing to people on weight-loss drugs, who eat less but need more macronutrients to prevent muscle loss. Calcium for bone health is another selling point. Big Cottage Cheese is having a moment.

Baton Rouge columnist Danny Heitman is coming forth, sharing his love for cottage cheese.

"I'm tired of the hiding and the pretending," he said. "I'm Danny Heitman, and I eat cottage cheese, and I like it."

Five days a week, he eats it for lunch. His brand is Horizon — "It's creamy and flavorful," he says, with the authority of a man who has done the research. 

He's particular about texture. "You want to avoid the watery consistency typical of cheaper brands." To his bowl he adds blueberries, apples, cranberries, and, sometimes, oranges, with a slice of toasted pita on the side. For crunch, he recommends toasted granola.

Eat cottage cheese and carry on.