Dive Brief:
- Bread sales fell 0.78% in the past year, according to scanner data compiled by Information Resources Inc. Fresh bread sales fell 1.32% from the prior year.
- The decline, although modest, follows a 1.7% drop in 2012 and a decline of 4.2% in 2011.
- The drop off is widely seen as connected to health issues. Bread is not seen as the healthy staple it once was, and more significantly, the gluten-free movement continues to grow.
Dive Insight:
There's almost certainly more happening here than a multiyear drop in sales. Bread, it seems, is fading from the U.S. diet at a much faster pace than anyone would have anticipated. As the article points out, toast was the fastest declining breakfast component a few years ago. Now bread, the fourth-most popular side dish in American dinners, is falling out of favor too. Certainly bread won't disappear. But the sense that Americans will eat it as part of their breakfast, lunch and dinner—as they did for decades—is gone.