A question about bananas

Cafe Society
#1

Not all the questions in life are important questions.

I eat a lot of bananas. Over a dozen a week. And I’ve noticed that Chiquita bananas are different than Dole or Del Monte bananas. With other bananas, I can just pull on the stem and it splits the peel. But that doesn’t work with a Chiquita banana; I have to bite the peel to split it.

My understanding is that all of the bananas sold in stores are Cavendish cultivars (unless you buy some noticeably exotic cultivars) so I feel that they shouldn’t be any significant differences between them.

Is there something about the way the Chiquita buyers choose their product that makes them different? Do they perhaps buy them from other regions or harvest them at different times or ship them by different methods?

#2

Dunno, but I have learned that when I pinch the blossom end of the banana, it splits the peel so I can peel it toward the stem (which, I have noticed, has a tendency to resist snapping open).

#3

Wait…you’re supposed to peel a banana?

#4

Of course. If you don’t peel them first, they explode when you boil them.

#5

I don’t really know but Wikipedia says

“In global commerce in 2009, by far the most important cultivars belonged to the triploid AAA group of Musa acuminata, commonly referred to as Cavendish group bananas. They accounted for the majority of banana exports,[59] despite only coming into existence in 1836.[61] The cultivars Dwarf Cavendish and Grand Nain (Chiquita Banana) gained popularity in the 1950s after the previous mass-produced cultivar, Gros Michel (also an AAA group cultivar), became commercially unviable due to Panama disease, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum which attacks the roots of the banana plant.[59] Cavendish cultivars are resistant to the Panama Disease, but in 2013 there were fears that the Black Sigatoka fungus would in turn make Cavendish bananas unviable.[62]”

I kind of alludes to Chaquita having a slightly different variant (Grand Nain)

#6

You like bananas a bunch, I take it. :wink:

#7
I do not peel them this way. I tried to retrain myself once, but failed - nay, not failed - but continued unabated in my rebellious banana peeling ways. If there is a banana deity waiting for me in a next life, I am most certainly doomed for my peeling heresies.
#8

Nice…

#9

Chiquita uses grand nain*, yes. Either that or they’re fertilized with the corpses of Chiquita’s paramilitary killings.
*“big dwarf,” heh.

#10

Yes we have no bananas!
Now I want a banana. Not fair.
:wink:

#11

Give that man a hand.

#12

I enjoy breaking a banana in half and peeling toward the end.

#13

I like to split them into three horizontal sections along the “seams.” Am I alone in that?

#14

Does anybody have a problem with bananas giving them really bad heartburn? I’ve mostly stopped eating bananas because of this.

#15

Peeling from the blossom end also eliminates the thin, lacey strands - they somehow stay in the peel.

#16

Never seen the point of bananas: you skin them, then throw the bone away. . .then what?

#17

The names are a bit strange… Big Dwarf, Big Mike… there’s probably a story behind that. Maybe several.

#18

Not at all. Most of the bananas I eat get tucked into a peanut butter sandwich. Cut the banana in half then split lengthwise into six sections for the perfect fit into two sandwiches.

#19

Yes, it’s banana month here on the SDMB.

We’ve done worse.

#20

This thread reminded me of a song snippet I heard in the 70s that I thought went ‘I like bananas because they have no bones’. I just googled it and was surprised at so many results! (and some are not at all like the tune I recalled).