I’m hoping the trimming causes the tree to bear more fruit next season. 2009 was a great year for both our trees, but they were getting a little bushy and we wanted the canopies cut back to reduce wind loading.

Between ketchup and salsa alone, I have to believe that tomatoes are the most popularly eaten fruit and that mangoes would be well down the list.

—Matt

And sorry, but none of that data takes in the backyard snackers. There are more mangoes grown in yards than commercially. Not so with tomatoes or grapes or bananas.

(BTW: something’s wrong with the banana figure quoted — if it’s only 16 million tons, mangoes and apples beat them by a mile.)

I concede tomatoes are more popular commercially.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Economic and Social Department Statistics Division estimated the worldwide production of mangoes to be 23 million metric tons in 2001. For the same year, the worldwide production of tomatoes for processing was 23.535 million metric tons. While that doesn’t look like a substantial gap, given the disparity in weight, more tomatoes have to be sold to meet the same weight.

Those numbers may be dated. DidYouKnow.com reports ‘Tomato World’s Most Popular Fruit’ with 60 million tons of tomatoes are produced per year, followed by bananas (16 million tons), apples (36 million tons) and finally watermelons (22 million tons).

You may be able to come up with more definitive numbers for 2004 by looking at the tables available from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations Economic and Social Department Statistical Division.

I’d also toss in a vote for the humble grape. Given worldwide grape consumption, raisin consumption and wine consumption, I’d say grapes are in the top five especially if you consider unit volume instead of weight volume.

—Matt