Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Bananas But Were Afraid to Ask

Throughout Central Africa, the banana is an essential staple food—available in many local varieties.

Banana Market in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Local plantain variety, Democratic Republic of Congo

Plantains—or "cooking bananas"—are simply varieties that usually don't ripen to sweetness, or can be cooked as a starched or ripened to eat raw.

Banana Education

When American entrepreneurs introduced the banana to U.S. consumers in the late 19th century, they faced the challenge of educating people on how to use this once-exotic, rare product.

Cheaper than Apples

One key marketing strategy for earlier bananas was to make them the cheapest fruit in the supermarket; astonishing, considering how far bananas had to be shipped and how perishable they are. That strategy continues today, at immense social and environmental cost.

One problem early banana marketers faced was the fruit's suggestive shape.

No proper Victorian lady wanted to be seen holding a banana, To change this, the banana companies released thousands of postcards, showing such ladies happily holding bananas. The strategy worked.

A victim of its popularity...

The banana entrepreneurs were so successful that they created another problem: people slipping and injuring themselves on discarded peels. Eventually, urban sanitation codes and departments had to be set up, partially to clean up banana waste.

Earlier variety...

The banana introduced to the American public was a different variety than the one we eat now. That fruit, called the Gros Michel, was better-tasting, bigger, and tougher (no bags or boxes in this scene!) than the Cavendish variety we now eat. But the banana industry's reliance on a Gros Michel monoculture—and poor environmental practices—led to that variety's total extinction as a commercial product by about 1960. The same fate now awaits the Cavendish, as a new disease devastates global crops once again. Lesson not learned.

Bananas aren't just yellow and green.

These spectacular red bananas are just one of over 1,000 varieties of the fruit grown throughout the world's tropical and subtropical regions.

Variety in America

Though 99.9% of our banana market is the boring, bland Cavendish, there are better bananas available in some local markets—like this red bananas, found at Hawaii's Kona Farmer's Market.

Bananas get sick

Though there are many types of bananas, they are all close enough genetically that banana disease can devastate an entire nation's crop. This problem is reaching critical mass, thanks to the ascendance of a single commercial variety—the Cavendish (that's the banana we eat in the U.S.)—whose monoculture is pushing out rarer, more hardy local varieties.

Diseased Banana

This banana has an unidentified malady—likely a fungal or bacterial infestation; the fruits are rendered inedible and the tree itself will soon die.

Variety in Africa

These banana "suckers"—or shoots—are catalogued for agricultural research in Africa. A banana sucker can be pulled from the ground, transported, and replanted, making the fruit spectacularly easy to grow and propagate. It is this ease that has made the fruit so popular worldwide during a 10,000 year migration from its theorized point of origin in Southeast Asia.

Wild Bananas

All bananas descend from a few rare wild varieties; non-cultivated bananas are usually tiny and inedible. The larger, farmed varieties consumed around the world are the result of millennia of painstaking, selective breeding by humans.

Inside a wild banana

Wild bananas have real seeds—rock hard and tooth-shattering. Not good for eating, but essential for breeding new, disease-resistant banana types. Unfortunately, the world's wild banana crop is threatened by commercial farming, urban development, and environmental destruction. Lose these bananas, and we lose the chance to save millions from potential starvation.

Banana Breeding

Old-fashioned selective breeding is notoriously difficult and slow for bananas. Since the need for disease-resistant varieties is so urgent, genetic modification is necessary. Here's the beginnings of a lab-built banana, grown in a Belgian research facility.

Baby Bananas

Once breeding begins—with qualities from other banana types or even other fruits and vegetables entirely—banana plantlets emerge. Ultimately, these need to be field-tested, a difficult task given global resistance to genetically modified plants.

Not all bananas are cheap, though...

Lately, banana companies have been looking for ways to price bananas higher—like these fruit, sold as individual snacks in a Belgian airport.

And that's it! Hope you enjoyed it. 

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