Cost of Fruit

Cost of Fruit

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Can you afford the Agriculture Department's recommended daily allowance of fruits and vegetables? In other words, how affordable is purchasing produce to meet dietary guidelines? According to one USDA economic researcher, surprisingly to some, affordable. "For an average American on a 2000 calorie diet, it's possible to meet your recommendations for about $2.10 to $2.60 per day." As in the range of two dollars ten cents to two dollars 60 cents a day according to Hayden Stewart of the Economic Research Service. He says this may help dispel a misconception among consumers that fruits and vegetables are more expensive to purchase.

"People are not in general meeting those recommendations and this perception that fruits and vegetables are expensive may be a contributing factor."

The research focused on combinations of fresh and processed produce that would meet minimum dietary guidelines and what their daily cost would be for consumers.

"So having gotten retail prices for all these different products we then said OK, the dietary guidelines say how many edible cups of an apple, let's say, might be roughly the amount that would fit in the measuring up after removing the refuse, the core, so that they would be consistent with the way that the dietary guidelines are reported.

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