Americans Eat An Astonishing Amount Of Tomatoes Per Year

As a nation, we're a little bit in love with the tomato. After potatoes, it is our second most-consumed veggie (if you thought it was a fruit, check out more facts you didn't know about tomatoes) with figures showing each person in the United States chomps though an average of 19.1 pounds per year. North America as a whole is responsible for over 25% of worldwide tomato consumption, way ahead of the European Union at 18% and EurAsia's 11%, according to figures from Trade Data Monitor, cited by Tomato News. Although tomatoes come in a vast range of shapes and sizes, from marble-sized, cherry varieties to giant, rare, heirloom kinds, processed tomatoes in particular dominate our buying habits.

According to the USDA, more than half of the tomatoes Americans consume are canned, with pizza sauce cited as one of the main drivers of demand. While there's a distinct difference between pizza and pasta sauce, our appetite for processed tomatoes is a healthy one. In 2023, we consumed 73.3 pounds per capita of processed tomatoes (per Agricultural Marketing Resource Center).

There are several reasons for this. Canned or tinned tomato products are often a lot cheaper than fresh, plus they're very nutritious. They're also more convenient, especially for home cooks who don't have a lot of time or space on their hands. Reaching for a tin of tomatoes that have been pre-peeled or diced, or adding a shot of tomato paste to make a bold red sauce is far less work than canning your own. Plus, because they're shelf stable, canned or tinned tomatoes will sit on a shelf or in a store cupboard for many months.

Americans may be suckers for a tasty tomato but it wasn't always the case. For many years, Europeans thought they were deadly, and only when they crept into medicines in 1700s England did that opinion start to change. What they called "love apples" made their way across the Atlantic with English immigrants in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. For few years, tomatoes were at the center of a medical craze and touted as the remedy for a range of illnesses (spoiler alert: they weren't). While that fad passed, the tomato remained, becoming a much-loved kitchen staple.

Although we don't eat as many fresh tomatoes as the processed kind, there are millions of gardeners across the U.S. who are successfully growing their own. They're using every trick in the book to maximize their tomatoes' flavor potential. Who knows, maybe next year, tomatoes will topple potatoes and take the crown for America's most popular vegetable?