By Reed Mangels, PhD, RD

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) tracks how much food is available each year, on average, for each person in the United States. These reports provide a fascinating snapshot of what Americans are likely to be eating. To determine how much food is available, the USDA tracks domestic production, initial inventories, and imports of a particular food and then subtracts exports and end-of-year inventories. An estimation of food availability per person is calculated by dividing the total amount of available product by the U.S. population. These estimates cannot tell us how much of a food an individual person eats but they can provide an estimate of the amount of food available for the average person.

     A recent report looks at the years 1970 to 2019. Over those 50 years, the total amount of fruits available, including fresh, canned, frozen, and dried fruit and fruit juice, decreased slightly from 238 pounds per capita to 236 pounds per capita. The amount of available fresh fruit increased and processed fruit (canned, frozen, dried, juice) decreased.

     If we only consider fresh fruits, the fruits with the largest increases in availability included

• Avocadoes 0.4 lbs/capita now 7.4 lbs/capita
• Bananas 17.4 lbs/capita now 27.4 lbs/capita
• Pineapples 0.7 lbs/capita now 7.3 lbs/capita

     Other fresh fruits with greater availability over the past 50 years include

• Lemons 2 lbs/capita now 4.7 lbs/capita
• Blueberries 0.2 lbs/capita now 2.1 lbs/capita
• Grapes 2.7 lbs/capita now 7.7 lbs/capita
• Mangoes 0.1 lbs/capita now 3.1 lbs/capita
• Strawberries 1.6 lbs/capita now 5.3 lbs/capita

     And with lower availability:

• Grapefruit 8 lbs/capita now 1.5 lbs/capita
• Oranges 15.6 lbs/capita now 9.1 lbs/capita
• Peaches 5.5 lbs/capita now 2.0 lbs/capita

Resources: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-availability-per-capita-data-system/

To read about vegetable availability in the United States, see: https://www.vrg.org/blog/?s=17+pounds+of+carrots