Macaroni and cheese has long been a favorite comfort food in the United States. Boxed mac dinners, scratch made, it's all been a tasty pasta dish that we've loved to tuck into for dinner, lunch or a quick snack.

As the pandemic has ravaged across the nation, however, data has begun to suggest that mac and cheese has also become a bigger part of our breakfast routine.

Kraft, for example, conducted a survey amongst 1,000 adults and found that over half of them had given their kids mac and cheese for breakfast more often during the pandemic.

Data from Tastewise, an AI platform that analyzes patterns around food on the internet, has also found mentions of mac and cheese for breakfast or brunch climb by 50% over the past year.

Foodbeast has also taken notice of some mac and cheese breakfast items that have popped up in various restaurants. The Southern California chain Breakfast Republic, for example, has a skillet of breakfast mac, topped with eggs and bacon, on their menu.

Other restaurants, like The Row in Nashville, Homeroom in Oakland, and Ritual in Houston, also carry similar items in their list of breakfast offerings, whether it be on their regular menu or as a special.

So, could macaroni and cheese be starting to grow in popularity as a breakfast item? The above definitely suggests otherwise, even if other data indicates that a majority of folks haven't heard too much of it yet.

Foodbeast has been surveying some of our own audience, and across over 1,400 people asked on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, only about 38% had heard of or tried a breakfast mac and cheese dish before. Additionally, data from Tastewise notes that of over 500,000 restaurants in their set, no more than a few hundred have the item somewhere on their menu.

This means that there's plenty of room for breakfast mac to catch on, should people desire it. Personally, I wouldn't mind digging into a few bowls of it with some oozy eggs for breakfast.