Apple Facts
Apple Facts You Might Like to Know
• About 55 million tons of apples, facts say, were produced in 2005, worldwide. The value of this large harvest was roughly ten billion dollars. China produces the most apples, followed by the United States and then Turkey, Italy and Poland.
• Of the apples grown in the United States, more than half are grown in the state of Washington. Other high-producing apple states include New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, California and Virginia. The United States also imports apples from New Zealand.
• Apple facts include these: The only apple native to the United States is the crabapple. We now grow over twenty five hundred different apple varieties here; of these, only about one hundred varieties are grown for commercial purposes.
• Apples are grown for commerce in about thirty-six states. They are grown for non-commercial or private uses in all fifty states. Apples have no fat, cholesterol or sodium, and the average medium-sized apple has about eighty calories and five grams of fiber.
• For eating and cooking, apple facts say, most apples are still picked by hand in the United States. Apples can be as large as a grapefruit, or as small as a cherry.
• Apples were first grown near the Black Sea, and the Greeks and Romans had a great love for them. One quarter of an apple is air, which is why they so easily float. And the largest apple ever picked weighed almost three pounds.
• Some apple trees have lived over a hundred years, and grown to a height of forty-plus feet. The blossoms on an apple tree are white when they first bloom, but later turn pink.
• Apple facts confirm that apples are the second most profitable fruit grown here in the United States. The only fruit that sells more, money-wise, is the orange. The most apples ever harvested in one season in the United States was over 277 million cartons. This occurred in 1998.
• An apple bushel weighs roughly forty-two pounds. You can make about twenty-two applesauce quarts from a bushel. By way of comparison, it takes about thirty-six apples to make one gallon of cider.
• You can help your health by eating apples, facts confirm, and not just from “keeping the doctor away”. If you eat apples with the skin still on them, you intake more fiber and anti-oxidants than you do when you peel the apple.
• In an average year, Americans eat, in various forms, a total of about forty-six pounds of apples per person. This includes products made from apples, as well as fresh apples.