Chris Johanesen

This is my tumble log. I do web stuff for BuzzFeed. My home page is here. Thanks for stopping by.

Try a new banana

mrgan:

My guess is that you, dear reader, either like bananas or you love them. I love them. I’ve gone through three or four or more in a day, and rare is the day that I go without one. Whether you like them or love them, my guess is you’d be sad to see bananas disappear from your grocer’s shelves. This is entirely possible; in fact, a shortage of bananas, or a significant increase in their price, is virtually guaranteed.

See, here in the US we all eat the same banana, of the Cavendish variety. When I say “the same banana”, this is closer to literal truth than you might think; all bananas are genetically identical clones of each other. The one you ate yesterday, the one I’m eating now, and the one your parents put in your cereal in 1985. Ever since Panama disease wiped out the world’s most popular banana (the Gros Michel) in the 1950s, we’ve been enjoying the Cavendish’s creamy taste, resistance to disease, and ease of growing and shipping.

Of course, this is only “easy” from the consumer’s point of view; whatever banana you look at, it’s grown in an environment rather harsh to the people involved in the process. The history of the banana is a sad one for Central-American workers. Pesticide-induced sickness, oppressive regimes, even more oppressive companies (United Fruit and Standard Fruit, today known as Chiquita and Dole), downright massacres. Things are getting a little better nowadays, it seems, but it’s still a harsh trade.

You can’t blame the delicious, nutritious, convenient banana, and it’s not easy blaming the American consumer who understandably picks up this handy-dandy fruit for one-fifth of a price of apples and pears. The banana is a good thing. And it’s in danger.

It is decidedly unwise, from an evolutionary perspective, for a plant to reproduce asexually, the way the banana does. When a new disease attacks one banana, it can spread to all bananas, and they have no hope of evolving resistance to the disease. They have no hope of evolving anything, really. Not without human help, which comes in the form of extremely slow and painstaking breeding, or complex (and laden with PR problems) genetic modification.

All this is very nicely explained in Dan Koeppel’s book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. (Amazon affiliate link - hope you’re cool with that) He also runs a blog about all things banana. Dan sounds like good people, and I’d gladly buy him a red-banana shake. (More on that later)

One of Dan’s small missions in life, and one which I’m aiming to undertake myself, is to get people to rethink their taste in bananas a bit. See, very smart people all around the world are working on new breeds of banana. Two of them, “Goldfinger” and “Sweetheart” look like excellent candidates - tough, relatively easy to grow, unsusceptible to the diseases that plague the Cavendish.

The problem - or “problem” - is, they don’t taste like the Cavendish. Goldfinger is described as less creamy and more tart, closer to an apple. Many in the industry are afraid that American consumers will be put off by this - bananas have been consistent for so long, the very idea of taste variation in them seems strange. Where an apple lover will deliberately look for new varieties - one sweeter, one crisper, one creamier - bananas aren’t sought that way.

But there are options. Many American supermarkets now carry “baby” (or “mini”) bananas. Whole Foods has them, but here in Portland, even Safeway and Fred Meyer regularly feature these.

An even better banana, in my opinion, is the red banana. It’s softer when ripe, creamier, and very fragrant. Where the cavendish only starts having a noticeable aroma when it’s nearing the end of its life, the red banana is perfumey at all times. Not that you should eat it before it’s ripe, and granted, this is harder to tell than with yellow bananas. Look for softened skin and very sweet, near-fermented flavor. In my experience, people tend to eat all bananas before their time; unless there are flecks of brown, you’re eating a lot of unconverted sugar which will result in a too-tart, metallic flavor, and a tummy ache. Definitely don’t bite into anything with green or close-to-green skin.

So, look for unusual bananas. Ask your grocer what all they can get. If you’re going to India for whatever reason, make sure you try the local varieties (Dan Koeppel loves ‘em). Buy organic if you feel like it, but don’t expect miracles (organic bananas come without pesticides, but with all the other worker-unfriendly policies). Try some recipes - don’t limit yourself to cereal bananas. Buy Dan’s book. Enjoy.