- Many parents are buying large amounts of fresh fruit for their young kids to eat, as The Washington Post wrote.
- Data shows berry prices have increased, and parents bond over the shared struggle of affording fruit.
- Other data claims average wages have increased more than berry prices.
The Washington Post published an article last Friday titled, “Parents are ‘going broke on berries.’”
I’m neither a parent nor a berry lover, but after reading the article, I can see where the parents’ stress comes from.
Kristen Fox, a mother interviewed by The Post, “brought home a Costco haul of fruit meant to last her 3-year-old twins a week,” but it was gone by lunchtime, she said.
Apparently, many parents have bonded over this shared pain of berry expenses, from Fox to Kylie Kelce, wife of former NFL player Jason Kelce and mother of their four children.
The Washington Post quoted her remarks from a 2024 episode of her podcast, “Not Gonna Lie.” She said the one thing she has spent the most money on in her life is packs of berries. “It has to overcome diapers,” she said.
Berries by the numbers
In its article, The Post displayed interesting graphs with information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It said the data from USDA showed “The supply of strawberries per person has more than tripled since 1980, from under two pounds a year to nearly seven, on average.” This increase was labeled “The berry boom.”
On top of that, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that banana prices have stayed relatively stable the past four decades, while strawberry prices have gone up. “Once a cheap treat, strawberries now cost six times as much as bananas,” per The Post.
The article said with current strawberry prices, buying one pound a week comes out to around $170 a year. And that’s “before anyone has touched a blueberry.”
Data was also displayed that found berry consumption has increased across all income levels, but there is a growing gap between how many berries each income level purchases.
Another perspective
An article from Economist Writing Every Day had a different take on the “berry panic.”
While the article did agree that Americans are consuming more berries than they used to and that a lot of that “is thanks to foreign trade and imports,” it claimed berries are not actually “breaking the budget for parents.”
It used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to show that families spend “between 0.30% and 0.45% of income” on fresh fruits, which is “less than $1 out of every $200 of income.”
It said families spend an average of $600 a year on all fruit, not just berries. “Just a little over $10 per week.”
The article made a graph of berry prices compared to wages over the years, and claimed that “relative to median wages, berries of all kinds are now more affordable than a decade ago."
Another mom quoted by The Post, Brooke Tansley, created a Berry Spending Calculator to see how much families spend on berries. You can check it out and decide for yourself if berries are breaking your family’s bank.