5 ms·

The Miracle of the Modern Banana

72 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

tehwebguy 10y ago
> When people talk about fruit at cocktail parties, my only quibble is something semantic: how people use the word “the"—as in, when the strawberry arrived in North America, or how the avocado is paralyzing Central American farmers. Dude goes to some pretty stuffy parties. For real though this is interesting. Seems logical that as a food we grow consolidates it becomes easier for one biological agent to wipe it out.
- mark_edward 10y ago
  Could be hint to not consolidate our food so excessively, if possible. Irish potato famine was probably an earlier hint.
  - rwallace 10y ago
    And in the meantime, make damn sure we keep samples of every existing genotype of crop species, including the varieties that aren't in themselves commercially useful because of low yields or whatever. We don't know in advance which variety might have the gene the species needs to survive some disease.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      ...or just make what we need later? I think the random-cross-slow-road of gene selection is going to be passé pretty soon.
      - rwallace 10y ago
        I think that's a great goal to aim for, but remember we were supposed to have full-blown Drexler-style molecular manufacturing years ago and like most things in this universe it has turned out to be harder than we expected, so let's try to avoid letting the set of (literal) deadlines we face get any bigger than it needs to be.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
buckbova 10y ago
First of a three part series?!
- mabcat 10y ago
  Second part: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/08/bananas-are-so-cool/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/th...
  - _nalply 10y ago
    And the third comes out tomorrow! (Friday, August 12th)
mc32 10y ago
I want Big Mikes (looks like some might have survived in Indonesia) although many which claim to be are FHIA hybrids. Apparently they were/are way more delicious. Some supermarkets have lesser varieties from the red ones to the dwarf ones (wish they'd label them to know exactly what they were).
- nerdponx 10y ago
  https://youtu.be/GfX8taUsoEA https://youtu.be/GfX8taUsoEA
  - mc32 10y ago
    Neat. Following the video trail someone said they're pretty commonish in SEAsia and that people might have some trees in their back yards in So FL.
- GioM 10y ago
  Tasting a bunch of different varieties... maybe you'll find yours here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MeGQnGMA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MeGQnGMA0
eggy 10y ago
I've been vegetarian for almost three years now, and the banana has become even more important to me than when I used to slice them up as a kid and put them in my Corn Flakes back in Brooklyn (yeah, no 5-grain, fair-trade, grown by native peoples cereals when I was a kid!). Now, I live in East Java, Indonesia, and I eat the bananas right outside, which are a plantain. I am amazed out how quickly the plant regrows and produces fruit. I never knew they were a berry. Indonesian bananas just gained tariff-free import to Japan last year to compete with the likes of Dole, Chiquita, and others. Fortunately, Indonesia has many varieties still being grown in case the TR-4 fungus hits harder than it already has. The Philippines has lost many plantations. I personally prefer the smaller, less popular banana here for its taste. Maybe all those years of eating Cavendish bananas wore out my taste buds. I do think the GMO crowd will step in, since obviously they can't wait to hybridize a local banana to scale up production to meet demand.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > I personally prefer the smaller, less popular banana here for its taste. Most people do. The cavendish is not popular because it's good[0], it's popular because it's export-resilient: it supports green-picking and ethylene-ripening well, it handles limited refrigeration (13.5~15C) for long periods of time, it has good shelf life after artificial ripening and it looks pretty good all along (as far as western consumers are concerned anyway). A cavendish might see to two months between picking and consumption. [0] most people I know of who have eaten other cultivars find cavendish bland and uninteresting, one of my colleagues compared it to an oatmeal sausage
  - vanderZwan 10y ago
    I live in Sweden at the moment, in a work environment with many nationalities. You remind me of how all colleagues from countries around the Mediterranean Sea agree that the vegetables and fruit are pretty bland over here, and that the selection is pretty small as well. The reason for that is exactly what you said: the choices are limited by export-resilience.
elijahparker 10y ago
Fascinating! I recall eating the best bananas I've ever had when I was in the Dominican Republic. They were a little short and thicker, but much denser and more moist (made the US Cavendish seem dry and lightweight in comparison) with a great flavor. I don't know what variety they would have been. I'm curious as to why more varieties are not available globally. I guess I'll have to wait for the next part.
- drdrey 10y ago
  I have fond memories of very short and sweet bananas in the French Caribbean and Vietnam, I wonder if it's the same variety. I would also describe them as more moist.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Vietnam was most likely "Chuoi Cau", they look like burro bananas but are very sweet and easy to peel? Interesting that you bring up Vietnam because it looking increasingly like they are looking to be the largest banana supplier to Asia, soon to overtake the Philippines. There was a big splash in Japan last year when Vietnamese bananas showed up in Don Quijote a discount chain in Japan.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  I think some of that is aesthetic, compared to the burro banana, the Cavendish is certainly more elegant looking. Burros are the ones you tend to see in most Latin American markets in the US, plump and stubby. They are no less tasty however. Some of the other such as plantains aren't very edible raw which is why you seem them flambéd in deserts and fried into chips.
Karupan 10y ago
The southern part of India, where I'm from, has many varieties of bananas which aren't available if you travel a couple of hundred kilometers up north. One particular variety, which is locally called "Matti" is very small, but is the sweetest banana I've eaten. Always wonder why its availability isn't widespread!
- m_eiman 10y ago
  Always wonder why its availability isn't widespread! As a guess, it doesn't transport as well as Cavendish: ripens too quickly, gets brown spots too easily.
  - Karupan 10y ago
    True that. I remember when I got a bunch for a 12 hour trip and it was basically gooey by the time I got to the destination.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dragonmum 10y ago
  The Southern part of India happens to be the actual point of origin of the banana plant and would therefore be the site with the greatest genetic diversity of both edible and wild inedible banana species. Same way Kazakhstan happens to be the origin of apples and used to have the most genetic variation until some Soviet era dictator decided to have much of the forests that were the gene bank for apple varieties cleared to grow cotton instead. Of note, many have forgotten, but rice suffered from a pandemic blight in the 1980s that was saved only because a particular species of wild rice, coincidentally found in South India, happened to have disease resistant genes.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    > The Southern part of India happens to be the actual point of origin of the banana plant Do you have a source for this part?
bogomipz 10y ago
And most of the bananas success is is due to the United Fruit Company(nee Chiquita) an American company. In fact the term "banana republic" comes from United Fruits conspiring and helping to overthrow governments in both Honduras and Guatemala that were unfriendly to its exploitive and questionable practices. In a stroke of PR genius The United Fruit then appropriated a mascot - The Señorita Chiquita Banana based on Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat", from the Hollywood movie "The Gangs All here." Youtube it if you want some entertainment. This largely put an innocuous public image on their immoral business practices. "The Banana Company" in Gabriel Garcia's "Hundred Years of Solitude" is also an allusion to the United Fruit Company. I can recommend this read on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/dp/1847671942 https://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/d...
- acqq 10y ago
  Thanks, a nice introduction to the topic. Some details in the following article: "In June of 1954, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower approved a coup, led by the Central Intelligence Agency, to drive Árbenz out of power. It was subtle and designed to be secret: Almost $3 million was allotted for the operation, and the largest expenditure was for "psychological warfare and political action” designed to limit detection of American fingerprints. CIA director Allen Dulles wrote in a memo to President Eisenhower that, “The entire effort is…more dependent upon psychological impact rather than actual military strength.” The gambit worked, and when the coup ended, the CIA installed a new president sympathetic to American interests. Árbenz was taken to the airport, stripped to his underwear, paraded before cameras, and exiled to Mexico. The fight with the United States that had cost him his dignity was over taxes, land, and wages. But at its core, it was about bananas. Árbenz spent the next few decades wandering around Mexico, Switzerland and France. Meanwhile, Guatemala, stripped of its leader, its dignity, and its national ambition, descended into civil war. The conflict lasted 36 years." http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/08/bananas-are-so-cool/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/th... And in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
  - 10y ago
jonah 10y ago
I've had some amazing bananas in Central America. (You can also often find non-Cavendish varieties at your local Mexican, Latino, or various Asian markets.)
caub 10y ago
I can eat kilos of fruit daily, but banana is not in my top 10. Peaches, tomatoes(let's count them), figs, persimmons, clementines, mandarines, aprocots, ... those are the champs
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  Maybe because the Cavendish is so bland?
deanclatworthy 10y ago
There is a brilliant article [1] on Damn Interesting about the history of the banana. [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-...

72 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

> When people talk about fruit at cocktail parties, my only quibble is something semantic: how people use the word “the"—as in, when the strawberry arrived in North America, or how the avocado is paralyzing Central American farmers. Dude goes to some pretty stuffy parties. For real though this is interesting. Seems logical that as a food we grow consolidates it becomes easier for one biological agent to wipe it out.

mark_edward 10y ago
Could be hint to not consolidate our food so excessively, if possible. Irish potato famine was probably an earlier hint.
- rwallace 10y ago
  And in the meantime, make damn sure we keep samples of every existing genotype of crop species, including the varieties that aren't in themselves commercially useful because of low yields or whatever. We don't know in advance which variety might have the gene the species needs to survive some disease.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    ...or just make what we need later? I think the random-cross-slow-road of gene selection is going to be passé pretty soon.
    - rwallace 10y ago
      I think that's a great goal to aim for, but remember we were supposed to have full-blown Drexler-style molecular manufacturing years ago and like most things in this universe it has turned out to be harder than we expected, so let's try to avoid letting the set of (literal) deadlines we face get any bigger than it needs to be.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

buckbova 10y ago

First of a three part series?!

mabcat 10y ago
Second part: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/08/bananas-are-so-cool/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/th...
- _nalply 10y ago
  And the third comes out tomorrow! (Friday, August 12th)

mc32 10y ago

I want Big Mikes (looks like some might have survived in Indonesia) although many which claim to be are FHIA hybrids. Apparently they were/are way more delicious. Some supermarkets have lesser varieties from the red ones to the dwarf ones (wish they'd label them to know exactly what they were).

nerdponx 10y ago
https://youtu.be/GfX8taUsoEA https://youtu.be/GfX8taUsoEA
- mc32 10y ago
  Neat. Following the video trail someone said they're pretty commonish in SEAsia and that people might have some trees in their back yards in So FL.
GioM 10y ago
Tasting a bunch of different varieties... maybe you'll find yours here? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MeGQnGMA0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-MeGQnGMA0

eggy 10y ago

I've been vegetarian for almost three years now, and the banana has become even more important to me than when I used to slice them up as a kid and put them in my Corn Flakes back in Brooklyn (yeah, no 5-grain, fair-trade, grown by native peoples cereals when I was a kid!). Now, I live in East Java, Indonesia, and I eat the bananas right outside, which are a plantain. I am amazed out how quickly the plant regrows and produces fruit. I never knew they were a berry. Indonesian bananas just gained tariff-free import to Japan last year to compete with the likes of Dole, Chiquita, and others. Fortunately, Indonesia has many varieties still being grown in case the TR-4 fungus hits harder than it already has. The Philippines has lost many plantations. I personally prefer the smaller, less popular banana here for its taste. Maybe all those years of eating Cavendish bananas wore out my taste buds. I do think the GMO crowd will step in, since obviously they can't wait to hybridize a local banana to scale up production to meet demand.

masklinn 10y ago
> I personally prefer the smaller, less popular banana here for its taste. Most people do. The cavendish is not popular because it's good[0], it's popular because it's export-resilient: it supports green-picking and ethylene-ripening well, it handles limited refrigeration (13.5~15C) for long periods of time, it has good shelf life after artificial ripening and it looks pretty good all along (as far as western consumers are concerned anyway). A cavendish might see to two months between picking and consumption. [0] most people I know of who have eaten other cultivars find cavendish bland and uninteresting, one of my colleagues compared it to an oatmeal sausage
- vanderZwan 10y ago
  I live in Sweden at the moment, in a work environment with many nationalities. You remind me of how all colleagues from countries around the Mediterranean Sea agree that the vegetables and fruit are pretty bland over here, and that the selection is pretty small as well. The reason for that is exactly what you said: the choices are limited by export-resilience.

elijahparker 10y ago

Fascinating! I recall eating the best bananas I've ever had when I was in the Dominican Republic. They were a little short and thicker, but much denser and more moist (made the US Cavendish seem dry and lightweight in comparison) with a great flavor. I don't know what variety they would have been. I'm curious as to why more varieties are not available globally. I guess I'll have to wait for the next part.

drdrey 10y ago
I have fond memories of very short and sweet bananas in the French Caribbean and Vietnam, I wonder if it's the same variety. I would also describe them as more moist.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Vietnam was most likely "Chuoi Cau", they look like burro bananas but are very sweet and easy to peel? Interesting that you bring up Vietnam because it looking increasingly like they are looking to be the largest banana supplier to Asia, soon to overtake the Philippines. There was a big splash in Japan last year when Vietnamese bananas showed up in Don Quijote a discount chain in Japan.
bogomipz 10y ago
I think some of that is aesthetic, compared to the burro banana, the Cavendish is certainly more elegant looking. Burros are the ones you tend to see in most Latin American markets in the US, plump and stubby. They are no less tasty however. Some of the other such as plantains aren't very edible raw which is why you seem them flambéd in deserts and fried into chips.

Karupan 10y ago

The southern part of India, where I'm from, has many varieties of bananas which aren't available if you travel a couple of hundred kilometers up north. One particular variety, which is locally called "Matti" is very small, but is the sweetest banana I've eaten. Always wonder why its availability isn't widespread!

m_eiman 10y ago
Always wonder why its availability isn't widespread! As a guess, it doesn't transport as well as Cavendish: ripens too quickly, gets brown spots too easily.
- Karupan 10y ago
  True that. I remember when I got a bunch for a 12 hour trip and it was basically gooey by the time I got to the destination.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dragonmum 10y ago
The Southern part of India happens to be the actual point of origin of the banana plant and would therefore be the site with the greatest genetic diversity of both edible and wild inedible banana species. Same way Kazakhstan happens to be the origin of apples and used to have the most genetic variation until some Soviet era dictator decided to have much of the forests that were the gene bank for apple varieties cleared to grow cotton instead. Of note, many have forgotten, but rice suffered from a pandemic blight in the 1980s that was saved only because a particular species of wild rice, coincidentally found in South India, happened to have disease resistant genes.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > The Southern part of India happens to be the actual point of origin of the banana plant Do you have a source for this part?

bogomipz 10y ago

And most of the bananas success is is due to the United Fruit Company(nee Chiquita) an American company. In fact the term "banana republic" comes from United Fruits conspiring and helping to overthrow governments in both Honduras and Guatemala that were unfriendly to its exploitive and questionable practices. In a stroke of PR genius The United Fruit then appropriated a mascot - The Señorita Chiquita Banana based on Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat", from the Hollywood movie "The Gangs All here." Youtube it if you want some entertainment. This largely put an innocuous public image on their immoral business practices. "The Banana Company" in Gabriel Garcia's "Hundred Years of Solitude" is also an allusion to the United Fruit Company. I can recommend this read on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/dp/1847671942 https://www.amazon.com/Bananas-United-Fruit-Company-Shaped/d...

acqq 10y ago
Thanks, a nice introduction to the topic. Some details in the following article: "In June of 1954, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower approved a coup, led by the Central Intelligence Agency, to drive Árbenz out of power. It was subtle and designed to be secret: Almost $3 million was allotted for the operation, and the largest expenditure was for "psychological warfare and political action” designed to limit detection of American fingerprints. CIA director Allen Dulles wrote in a memo to President Eisenhower that, “The entire effort is…more dependent upon psychological impact rather than actual military strength.” The gambit worked, and when the coup ended, the CIA installed a new president sympathetic to American interests. Árbenz was taken to the airport, stripped to his underwear, paraded before cameras, and exiled to Mexico. The fight with the United States that had cost him his dignity was over taxes, land, and wages. But at its core, it was about bananas. Árbenz spent the next few decades wandering around Mexico, Switzerland and France. Meanwhile, Guatemala, stripped of its leader, its dignity, and its national ambition, descended into civil war. The conflict lasted 36 years." http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/the-plate/2016/08/bananas-are-so-cool/ http://www.nationalgeographic.com/people-and-culture/food/th... And in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A...
- 10y ago

jonah 10y ago

I've had some amazing bananas in Central America. (You can also often find non-Cavendish varieties at your local Mexican, Latino, or various Asian markets.)

caub 10y ago

I can eat kilos of fruit daily, but banana is not in my top 10. Peaches, tomatoes(let's count them), figs, persimmons, clementines, mandarines, aprocots, ... those are the champs

bbcbasic 10y ago
Maybe because the Cavendish is so bland?

deanclatworthy 10y ago

There is a brilliant article [1] on Damn Interesting about the history of the banana. [1] https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-the-banana/ https://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-...