Who gets to decide what food you eat? In the case of potatoes, it’s McDonalds. Says AP:
Because McDonald’s buys more than 3.4 billion pounds of U.S. potatoes annually, it has the power to dictate whether a variety sprouts or winds up in the less-lucrative supermarket freezer’s crinklecut bin — or worse yet, banished to become dehydrated taters. “It’s a card game where McDonald’s holds nine-tenths of the cards,” said Jeanne Debons, the Potato Variety Management Institute’s director.
Last year, the U.S. grew 37 billion pounds of potatoes, so McDonald’s consumed “only” 9.2% of the nation’s potato grop. That makes them a giant in the business.
But here’s an unnerving statistic: only 1/3 of the potatoes Americans eat are fresh, the rest are processed– and the proportion of processed potatoes is rising:
Around 60 percent of annual output is processed into frozen products (such as frozen fries and wedges), crisps, dehydrated potato and starch… Each American eats more than 54 kg of potatoes every year. However, fresh potato consumption has declined from more than 22 kg per person in 1993 to just 16 kg in 2006.
From this, we could deduce that the average American eats almost 11 pounds of McDonalds french fries each year. Yuk!
