Here Are the Foods We've Been Talking About During Quarantine, According to Twitter

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it much more difficult to socialize in person and much easier to get sucked into the rabbit hole of social media. So what have been the top topics while Americans spend more time hunkering in their house? This morning, Twitter released its “Twitter From Home” Report, aiming to recap “What we’ve been listening to, watching, eating, and doing to stay connected and entertained in quarantine” for the past six months—with “we” of course assuming that you haven’t dedicated 100-percent of your social media time to TikTok.

Quick recap: Based on number of tweets, “we’ve” been listening to BTS, watching Black Panther (R.I.P. Chadwick Boseman), and watching The Last Dance. But this ain’t K-Pop & Wine (though that’s not a bad idea); it’s Food & Wine. So let’s dig into the eating findings.

Popeyes turned 2019 into the year of the chicken, and 2020 hasn’t been much different. During the pandemic, “chicken” has been the most tweeted about food. Interestingly, however, Twitter says it wasn’t just sandwiches that sent poultry flying towards number one. “McDonald’s announced it would debut its spicy chicken nuggets in the US for the first time and Twitter celebrated,” the site explained.

That push is even more impressive when you see the second most tweeted food term: “bread.” Sourdough and other bread baking was pretty much the defining hobby of the early lockdown days—leading to flour shortages and yeast exchanges. But apparently social media’s baking obsession tapered off just enough for bread to slip to the number two spot. Twitter admitted, “From focaccia to sourdough, bread baking had a big moment in the beginning of quarantine.” Now, I guess, not so much.

And speaking of baking, Twitter also pointed out that social media saw a spike in food words related to things we do at home. “Conversations around cooking grew 50 percent and Tweets about doing the dishes nearly tripled as eating out was no longer an option,” they wrote. That also might explain why, as Twitter added, “From chocolate and cookies to cheese and potatoes, six out of the top ten foods were less-than-healthy comfort foods as people settled in to their new normal of staying in.”

Here’s the entire “Most Tweeted about food in the US” list, determined by comparing tweets from March 1 to September 1 of 2019 with the same period from this year:

1. Chicken
2. Bread
3. Cake
4. Cookies
5. Cheese
6. Chocolate
7. Rice
8. Beans
9. Potato
10. Salad

Finally, Twitter tossed in one other piece of analysis: Though “cake” finished third on the list, that position was less about baking and more about gawking. “The ‘Everything is cake’ Twitter trend of hyper-realistic cakes that looked like other objects had people in awe, bringing cake to the #3 most Tweeted about food,” the site explained. Because when you aren’t allowed to do anything else, let them look at cake!