Research

Celery review

by Chris Wright

We at the Phoenix subscribe to many periodicals: Newsweek, Harper's, the New York Review of Books. It seems that we've been missing out, though. Today we received our first issue -- "FREE" -- of Research Alert, a publication containing "important newly released market-research studies." Quite.

Topics covered in the latest issue include acne ("affects nearly 80 percent of 11-to-30-year-olds"), supermarket patrons ("68 percent believe that better shelf signs would speed up their shopping"), and Miss America ("elicits little interest"). The item that caught our eye, however, was this: "Celery consumption has remained . . . flat at about seven pounds per capita per year over the past four decades."

We called Gary Lucier, a fruit and vegetable analyst at the USDA, for the celery lowdown.

Q: How did you come by your figures?

A: They come from the addition of US production. We produce celery; celery exists and it disappears.

Q: What's interesting about celery?

A: It's used pretty heavily around the holidays. We wrote in the summer about garlic. We have one coming up on cucumbers. So we thought, why not focus on celery?

Q: It's kind of a nothing food, isn't it?

A: You use celery in a lot of places you don't think about: on party platters, in stuffing. Waldorf salad I think has celery in it. There's celery and peanut butter. It's called "something something on a log." I remember that from Scouts or something.

Q: What else might people not know about celery?

A: Men eat more celery than women. Men over 60 are very strong consumers of celery. What might be surprising to you is that men between the ages of 20 and 39 eat a lot of celery. Men and women under the age of 20 don't eat a lot of celery.

Q: Why?

A: You don't find tons of celery in the fast-food area.

Q: Was there a Golden Age of celery?

A: The peak use was in 1946, 9.1 pounds per capita.

Q: Is there hope for the future?

A: Oh, yeah. Older people like celery. So that could bode well over the next 10 or 20 years as the Baby Boomers age.

Q: Have you had calls from the national papers about this?

A: It's coming. I think the presidential thing is siphoning some of them off. You got the scoop.