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What’s Wrong with Bananas (2018)
- linuxftw 4y agoThere are many interesting cultivars of bananas. Cavendish is the worst banana available, and the sooner it goes extinct in mass ag, the better.
- coldpie 4y agoI've tried a small handful of different bananas (maybe a half-dozen?) and nah. Cavendish is above average. Certainly there are better, and more varieties being available would be awesome, but Cavendish is nowhere near the bottom of the pack. Red Delicious apples, now, those belong in the dustbin of history :) Perhaps we can do to banana varieties what we did to apples and have nice wide variety to choose from at the store.
- grogenaut 4y agoFuji, and now cosmic crisp... Red delicious should only exist for pies
- NoZebra120vClip 4y agoMy favourite apple variety right now is the organic Cripp, aka Pink Lady. Lovely aroma and flavours. I used to eat Granny Smiths in my youth, but they're too tart and green compared to those nice organic Cripps.
- kiliantics 4y agoI much prefer pies that are baked with a very tart apple, which mellows out and gives lots of complex flavour when cooked. Back home we had "cooking apples" especially meant for this which were basically inedible when raw. Now I'm in the US and can't find such apples and can't stand the apple pies here that are overly sweet and bland.
- Tagbert 4y agoI usually use half Grannie Smith and half something more aromatic in a pie. The Grannie provides firmness and tartness and the other varieties provide more appleiness. I control the sweetness with how much sugar I add, usually using less than the recipes call for.
- UncleSlacky 4y agoThis is what you need: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramley_apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramley_apple Apparently the tree is available in the US: https://www.orangepippintrees.com/trees/apple-trees/bramleys-seedling https://www.orangepippintrees.com/trees/apple-trees/bramleys...
- jollyllama 4y agoHave you tried going to a farmers market? Ask the sellers what apple to use for pie, and they'll direct you to cooking apples. This is especially true if you go to an Amish market.
- q845712 4y agohard to find commercially in the US but we tend to call them "crabapples" (many crabapples are too small or only suitable for juicing but some are large enough for culinary use), or you can look for some cider homebrewing enthusiasts who may know how to source tart/dry apples in your area.
- klyrs 4y agoRed delicious is a terrible pie apple, unless you hate the flavor of apples and only want sugary cinnamonny mush.
- 83 4y agoRed delicious are great for dehydrated apple chips. Though I admit I haven't found any use for them outside of that.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI used to work in a grocery store. I had a conversation with the lady in Floral (she was ancient) about Red Delicious apples. I guess they used to actually be delicious, so she says. Something went wrong over the years. One thing I can tell you from experience is that they're weirdly resistant to decay. Everything else will go bad in patches. If you've got a bad orange, you've probably got eight partially bad oranges next to it. I saw a bad red delicious apple once, the rest of the case was pristine.
- ignite 4y ago> Something went wrong over the years Yeah, they bred the for being shippable, over flavor. https://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/why-are-red-delicious-apples-popular https://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/why-are-r... Same thing with tomatoes: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/why-do-uk-tomatoes-taste-bad https://www.wired.co.uk/article/why-do-uk-tomatoes-taste-bad
- pvaldes 4y ago> Something went wrong over the years. They're weirdly resistant to decay. (Nobody expected the research advances in plant physiology, he, he) Applacadabra! Poof! Flavor will vanish now by invoking the power of science but your beauty will last forever! Take that, snow white's witch! https://www.agrofresh.com/solutions/harvista/ https://www.agrofresh.com/solutions/harvista/ Yup, we can delay aging in apples and is standard since many decades ago
- 2ICofafireteam 4y agoIt depends on your benchmark. I have nothing to cite but, just based on their ubiquity, I would bet $5 against the hole in a bagel that Cavendish bananas produce more per acre than any other variety.
- JohnFen 4y agoI think the reason Cavendish is the main crop is because it can survive shipping and handling well. Most varieties of bananas can't.
- Scoundreller 4y agoAnd some of that Cavendish preference is strictly cosmetic. Some varieties will blemish easily but still taste great inside for a while, while Cavendish blemishing means you’ve got 1-2 days tops to consume it.
- JohnFen 4y agoYes. Also also, Cavendish is a "dessert banana". Most banana varieties are more like plantains -- they're savory and are usually cooked.
- linuxftw 4y agoShipping, and relatedly, it will mature somewhat after picking. I suspect, much like a tomato, the closer you pick it to ripe, the better it actually is.
- unmole 4y agoYeah, no. I'd choose a Robusta Cavendish over a sickly-sweet Chakkarakeli or a mealy Nendran any day.
- vram22 4y agoNendran can be eaten either raw (i.e. ripe, but uncooked) or boiled, often with a little jaggery and spices like cardamom. People who don't like raw ripe Nendran may find the cooked variant tastes good, although it is not like the experience of eating a fresh banana. More like eating a cooked dessert, vaguely like a Western pudding. IMO the mealiness becomes a plus when it is eaten way.
- vram22 4y agoAlso, Nendran has an indescribable but distinct flavor which is different from a regular dessert banana.
- amelius 4y agoCrazy thing is that I can't find pure banana flavored ice cream in my local supermarket.
- PebblesRox 4y agoIf you can't find pure banana flavored ice cream, you might try making pure banana ice cream :) https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/3038-one-ingredient-banana-ice-cream https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/3038-one-ingredient-bana...
- unwind 4y agoI feel as if I've read this before, about the risks of putting all bananas in one basked so to speak. Still, interesting. I did not know that the banana can be classified as "our most important fresh fruit crop". Also, this part was ... quirky and made me want to click for more details or something: A McDonald’s burger and fries meal hardly varies from Riverside, California, to Elk Grove, Illinois, to Uppsala, Sweden. (Actually, McDonald’s fries in Sweden are a pleasant surprise.)
- sandos 4y agoIn Sweden we have the chain Max which is a direct competitor to McD. Max switched their fries to a much crunchier variant with the peel left on a couple of years ago, and we discussed just the other day that McD fries is not as loose and sloppy as it used to be. We guessed it might be a market adaptation to the (imho) much better Max fries.
- teddyh 4y agoMAX Burgers: https://www.maxburgers.com/ https://www.maxburgers.com/
- shaftway 4y agoSo... if McDonalds french fries had been left to their typical sexual reproduction instead of mankind meddling and creating asexual clones then the McDonalds french fry would have adapted to the changing environment and increased competition from the Max french fry by itself?
- Scoundreller 4y ago> with the peel left on So much food waste reduction by doing that.
- elil17 4y agoThey definitely are the most important fresh fruit. Bananas are the most consumed fresh fruit - the average person eats 32 pounds of bananas a year. They're the most popular fruit in many developed countries and a staple food in many developing countries. Now, not all of these are Cavendish, of course. Other countries, especially in banana-producing regions, have much wider varieties of bananas in their diets. The only fruit more popular is tomatoes - the average person eats 50 pounds of those a year. But they are typically not consumed fresh. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-popular-fruit-in-the-world.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-popular-fruit-i...
- steve1977 4y agoI always find it funny when people say “nature provides everything we need” and then refer to fruit like our current banana cultivars
- DonHopkins 4y agoBehold the Atheist's Nightmare! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A
- defrost 4y agoDunno 'bout all that .. but I like the colour. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr3iI8gg2fo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr3iI8gg2fo
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nirimda 4y agoNature provides everything we need, but sometimes nature's method of providing what we need is humans.
- taeric 4y agoThe best is when people learn that lemons were basically created by us. :D "When life refused to give you lemons, make them!"
- JohnFen 4y agoNature may provide everything we need, but not everything we want. Nobody needs bananas.
- steve1977 4y agoNot for current population sizes I guess.
- sampo 4y agoI guess the bananocalypse will eventually come some day. But it has been predicted to come for decades already. 2005: The Cavendish, the version of the banana that rests on top of American breakfast cereals, is "on a crash course toward extinction." 2010: a new strain of the Panama disease, that the Cavendish banana is not resistant to, sprung up in 1992 and threatens the world’s most popular banana once again 2016: Why bananas as we know them might go extinct https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/13/business/media/no-seriously-save-the-bananas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/13/business/media/no-serious... https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/commercial-banana-plants-are-perfect-clones-of-one-another/ https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/commercial-... https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/22/africa/banana-panama-disease/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/22/africa/banana-panama-dise...
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe bananapocalypse already happened: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoHence, the article...
- stewartbutler 4y agoEh, they definitely aren't fit for major cultivation anymore, but you can still find them. I picked up a basket (with a bunch of other varieties) from miamifruit.org a while back. They can't ship a lot of things to California, but if you live elsewhere in the lower 48 you should check them out.
- taeric 4y agoThe truly baffling thing to me, is I swear one of the hardest emphasized lessons in grade school was on the dangers of a monoculture. And yet, the vast majority of farming seems to just double down on it. Worse, non-farming does to. So many societies and institutions seem to try and build up the equivalent.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- eiiot 4y agoThere’s a great freakonomics episode on exactly what’s going on with bananas. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-most-interesting-fruit-in-the-world-update/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-most-interesting-fruit-...
- poisonarena 4y agolike the poster said above, NPR has been scaring us with banana doomsday events for years.. I remember listening to NPR in 2006, preparing for the end of the banana
- bannedbybros 4y ago[dead]
- tnel 4y agoI live in Cambodia. We have 21 or so different varieties of bananas, all pretty different. Our bananas are tangier, sweeter, and we have many ways to prepare them. I definitely eat at least half a pound a day of them. They grow so easily and sprout up out of the ground from their rhizomes. After the banana "tree" flowers and produces a bunch of bananas, it soon dies; so we chop up the tree and feed it to our animals and 3 more trees grow in its place. As a foreigner I buy a bunch of bananas for 25¢ to 50¢ usually.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago> I definitely eat at least half a pound a day of them What's your response to somebody who spends $1) at Dunkin Donuts in the morning for breakfast (large iced coffee, ham + egg + cheese sandwich on an English muffin, 2 orders of hash browns), then typically something like $20 at Moe's for dinner (some kind of bowl of chicken + rice + beans + chips + guacamole + queso dip) (or Chipotle or Chick-Fil-A) $30/day for 2 very "low quality" fast food to go meals
- tnel 4y agoMy response is that not everything is South East Asian prices, and even in Cambodia you can pay a lot for food if you're eating at the wrong places and eating more expensive stuff. Mexican food is expensive here and not particularly good for instance. (My Cambodian friends do make some really good home made Mexican food from scratch sometimes though) Honestly I like cheese and potatoes and egg and all, I just don't think I could consume that much of those in a day. I rarely eat eggs or dairy or bread just because they're not so popular over in Asia. I am known for eating much more than Cambodians though. Typically I skip breakfast, then for lunch I make a rice cooker full of rice and I go to the Asian "fast food" place and buy 2 bags of ready made food (either ginger chicken, stir fried eggplant, green beans and tofu, beef intestine curry with morning glories, palm sugar pork fat soup, or bitter gourd ground pork soup) and we eat that on our rice. Typically those two bags of food cost us $1.50 and feeds 4 people, the cost of the rice being so negligible I don't count it. We usually get 2 meals a day like that which comes out to $3 or $4 a day for 4 people and we eat to our heart's content. In-between meals I'll eat bananas or papayas that grow in our yard. Often I'll eat a lot of those at a time so that they don't spoil. I also make a lot of oatmeal chocolate coconut peanut butter no-bake cookies. (These are a bit more expensive treat and maybe cost $0.15 a piece in materials) When we eat at the regular places in Cambodia it's usually $2.50 a meal per person, so we try to avoid that. Coming back to the United States, most regular restaurants seem to cost at least $12 a person and it's a bit weird for me since I prefer eating cheap home-made meals and don't really get the appeal of restaurants.
- giantg2 4y agoSimular thing for how the US chicken industry used the same line of roosters to produce chickens and then faced some issues from it a few years ago.
- crazygringo 4y ago> A single cluster of nearly identical genotypes, the Cavendish subgroup, nearly monopolizes the world’s banana groves and banana trade. Just a reminder that this isn't true if you walk into an average supermarket in Brazil. You'll find banana prata, banana nanica, banana maçã, banana ouro, banana da terra... just look at an online supermarket search [1]. And to be clear these are all bananas eaten as fruit, not plaintains or anything. Wikipedia lists even more [2]. But somehow the English-speaking world ignores their existence. And it's not like they're exotic varieties you have to hunt down in rural areas or something. They're just the standard normal variety of bananas you buy at any urban supermarket. (Same as in an American supermarket you don't expect only one type of apple, but expect to see honeycrisp, fuji, granny smith, and so forth.) [1] https://www.paodeacucar.com/busca?terms=banana&p=1 https://www.paodeacucar.com/busca?terms=banana&p=1 [2] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#Como_alimento https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#Como_alimento
- ASalazarMX 4y agoMaybe we need a new rule, like the one about medical advancements... in mice. > nearly monopolizes the world’s banana groves and banana trade... in USA and Western Europe
- mschuster91 4y ago> But somehow the English-speaking world ignores their existence. And it's not like they're exotic varieties you have to hunt down in rural areas or something. Maybe because these banana breeds don't take lightly to the multi-week shipments required for bananas to be eaten in Europe?
- crazygringo 4y agoYeah maybe for Europe, but I'd think it wouldn't be too hard to plant them in Mexico and ship them to the US by truck. Brazil's a big country too and it's not like all the bananas are grown an hour outside the cities or anything. These sit around in supermarkets, they're not delicacies you have to find at a farmer's market that go bad in a day or something. I really wonder if the issue really is just lack of awareness. I can't count the number of articles I've read that basically lead you to think Cavendish is the only banana being grown at large scale anymore, when that's just not true.
- dang 4y agoDiscussed at the time: What’s Wrong with Bananas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18355575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18355575 - Nov 2018 (54 comments) Also related: The search is on for banana ancestors - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33247667 - Oct 2022 (22 comments) Parable of the Banana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26977808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26977808 - April 2021 (3 comments) The fungus that devastates the Cavendish banana has now arrived in Latin America - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20681954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20681954 - Aug 2019 (191 comments) The Cavendish banana is facing extinction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18192671 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18192671 - Oct 2018 (67 comments) The Banana As We Know It Is Dying Again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16093580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16093580 - Jan 2018 (110 comments) The Cavendish banana is under threat from a fungus - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425918 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425918 - Oct 2017 (45 comments) The Cavendish Banana Will Soon Be Gone - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13883805 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13883805 - March 2017 (70 comments) The Miracle of the Modern Banana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12263727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12263727 - Aug 2016 (35 comments) The Cavendish banana is slowly but surely being driven to extinction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10653220 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10653220 - Dec 2015 (24 comments) How the global banana industry is killing the world’s favorite fruit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8296326 - Sept 2014 (104 comments) Researchers fear that a fungus could cripple the world's banana monoculture - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7753317 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7753317 - May 2014 (7 comments) Fungus threatens top banana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6923823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6923823 - Dec 2013 (48 comments) The Unfortunate Sex Life of the Banana - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978934 - Dec 2010 (35 comments)∑
- LinuxBender 4y agoNon-JS Archive [1] I was actually expecting something different. For me what's wrong with bananas is the mixed bag of health. They have some good nutrients but also 14G of sugar and only 3G of fiber and somehow manage to have 27G of carbohydrates and a GI of 51. 51 is not bad on the Glycemic Index but I personally consider a banana a rare treat. [1] - https://archive.ph/FjeAB https://archive.ph/FjeAB