Fun Onion Facts

Did you know…?

• The three most common onion colors are yellow, red, and white.
• There are less than 1,000 onion farmers in the United States. Altogether, about 125,000 acres of onions are planted in the US each year.
• One serving of onion contains 45 calories.
• The average American eats almost 18.8 pounds of fresh and storage-type onions every year. To keep up, that’s 350 semi-truck loads of onions per day!
• The country that eats the most onions per capita is Libya, where each person eats about 66.8 lbs of onions every year.
• According to an old English Rhyme, the thickness of an onion’s skin can help predict the severity of the winter. Thin skins mean a mild winter is coming while thick skins indicate a rough winter ahead.
• According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest onion ever grown, weighed 10 pounds 14 ounces. It was grown by V. Throup of Silsden, England.
• Pace Foods (Picante sauce & salsas) uses about 21 million pounds of fresh onions every year.
• If you eat onions you can get rid of onion breath by eating parsley.
• Yellow onions make up more than 75% of the world’s production of onions.
• The official state vegetable of Georgia is the Vidalia onion.
• The official state vegetable of Texas is the Texas Sweet onion.
• In Blue Hill, Nebraska, no female wearing a “hat that would scare a timid person” can be seen eating onions in public.