I appreciate your participation here: I did not know that ordinary Soviet citizens were chronically short on calories in the late 1980s.

According to data that we have from Western sources (of course still take with a grain of salt since getting accurate statistics from the USSR on any topic was near impossible) average Soviet citizen consumed only slightly less calories than the average American.

Of course they ate much more grain products and potatoes and relatively little meat (and AFAIK it wasn’t very good quality at all anyway).

And of course tropical and out of season fruits were a huge luxury..