Imported produce - consumption has doubled

Although this should come as no surprise to us, I thought the numbers were interesting. Excerpts from an article on Care2.com written by Melissa Breyer.

Americans are consuming more imported fresh fruits and vegetables, frozen and canned produce, and fruit juice. Over the past 15 years Americans’ consumption of imported fresh fruits and vegetables has doubled.

Food & Water Watch studied fifty common fruit and vegetable products and found that:

• In 1993, imports made up one out of ten fresh fruits and one out of nine fresh vegetables Americans ate. In 2007 the import consumption share doubled to more than one out of five fresh fruits and fresh vegetables.
• On average, each American consumed 20 pounds of imported fresh fruit, 31 pounds of imported fresh vegetables and 24 pounds of imported processed produce and drank three gallons of imported juice in 2007.