One single plant, cloned thousands of times. Easily devastated by disease.
If you live in a northern climate, you have to rely on a very complicated and expensive delivery system that will supply you with this fruit that can only be grown in the tropics. And the only way to keep it economical is to create an economy where food prices are artificially kept low because first world countries systematically suppress developing countries that grow bananas into becoming stable economies that would actually provide better wages for farmers and workers who would raise the price of bananas.
We have cheap bananas because we don’t mind living in a world where we abuse farmers and workers to work for pennies to supply us in the first world with cheap bananas.
This is why bananas are cheaper in the UK than in Brazil
And just to rub salt into the wound, someone created a clothing store named after the political corruption imposed on those countries to accomplish this: Banana Republic.
I can’t think of what an equivalent would be in terms of offensive marketing, Starving Irish brand potatoes? A Saudi demolition company named after September 11th? A clothing store inspired by antebellum southern US clothes? I guess some companies still use imagery of indigenous people for tobacco products. That seems like it’s in the same vein.
Generally, I try to focus on how beautiful life can be, but damn if there isn’t a crowd trying to make it ugly for others.
i’m stealing the demolition company named around september 11th idea, that’s actually funny as fuck
I’ve always assumed I misunderstood the brands name but no one has corrected you yet…
To the rabbit hole!
Ok I’m back, it’s just ignorant assholes all the way down
Well that didn’t take very long… Disturbing how quickly you were able to discern it was all assholes all the way down.
Twin Towers wholesale outlet: our prices are coming down fast!
Pearl harbor casual clothing.
Jim crows bar and grill.
That’s only the Cavendish, there are other varieties of banana. I was recently in Hawai’i and got to try an Apple Banana that had been grown there.
In Southeast Asia we have lots of banana varieties that we regularly eat.
thousands
Millions at least
just like the previous, gros michael, the cavendish is susceptible to a fungal/bacterial disease. Wild type are pratically resistant, or a different species. but they often have that unslightly seeds.
also WATERMelons, figs, oranges.
all the seeded varieties can hybridize, or can cross pollinate with other plants. oranges, often have to use the wild “trifoliate” orange to grow better by grafting onto it. the trifoliate is pretty unique as its very hardy and cold tolerant, also possess defensive spines.
So they can feed disease too? Is there anything bananas can’t do?
Rebound from a viral pandemic, RIP Gros Michel
Only heard about those via my dad, never got to try one…
You’d reminded me that I still wanted to try these, someday, and I went looking, again, for if there was an easier means (other than travelling to Hawaii); I found this place that delivers within the contiguous states: https://miamifruit.org/products/gros-michel-banana-box-order. If you had wanted to try one; more expensive, due to the fragility of the crop, but viable.
Thanks for that, but holy crap that’s expensive
😄
They aren’t extinct, they just aren’t commercially viable to grow on large scales any more. A few isolated pockets of the trees survived the blight. A quick web search will turn up someone selling some if you really want to try them but like the other poster said if you’ve tried fake banana flavor you’ve tried gros michel.
That’s a myth about the flavour. Although TIL they do smell strongly like artificial banana flavour.
Do the 16p and 14p bananas taste better than the 13p bananas?
Oh, these aren’t meant to be eaten. They’re ‘for scale’ bananas and the price is based on manufacturing accuracy.
It’s weight-based.
while that looks dumb, keeping them separate helps them last longer.
But they don’t breathe under the plastic, accelerating the ripening
No flared base
Decomposes, no problrm. Self unplugging, if you will.
Based and “no need for flared base”-pilled
Removed by mod
Not when you haven’t got a complete moron at the helm slapping tariffs on everything he can think of. Here’s an example from a first world country (78p if you cba to click): https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/fyffes-bananas/115455355
I think the comment you’re replying to was a reference to The Office, a la “It’s one banana, what could it cost, $10?”
This is Arrested Development erasure.
As much as I’d love to respond with a troll face and pretend that was purposeful ragebait, I’m not gonna lie - having watched neither, I legit thought it was The Office lmao. Thanks for the correction =]
I mean the queerphobia, ableism and racism in Arrested Development is off the charts, and a lot if not all of the cultural references no longer hold up, so I wouldn’t recommend it. The office, well, it’s not great but it’s not as bad if you need some slop to play in the background.
Good to know, I will continue with my plan to not watch it, thanks lol
How dare.
Nearly no one got your reference :D
Thats insane 😂
I mean, they should, but because of what amounts to basically slave labor, they don’t cost near that much in the US. That’s the big evil of bananas these days. I love them, but I don’t buy them.
these days
No, this is always been the case with bananas. There’s a reason why we have the term banana republic. Literally every banana ever bought by an American has been drenched in blood.
There are more involved videos on the subject but this is the shortest and most concise that I could find.
At least it’s tasty blood?
Idk, I’m trying to find the silver lining here.
The sort of silver lining here is that America is finally getting a taste of our own medicine.
That is to say, Russia interfering with our elections in order to install a president more friendly to their interests. And then that President going hog wild fascist and veritably wrecking our constitutional government in order to service his own desires for power.
They’re radioactive.
That’s the way I like it
They’re completely safe what comes to Potassium-40 radioactivity! You need to eat a massive amount of them to even reach the point where you experience radiation sickness. Actually, you might experience excessive potassium toxicity levels first. (Or you might not! Human bodies are equipped to get rid of excess potassium.) Or, you know, you might experience the problems of stuffing too much stuff down your gullet. There’s only so much stuff you can fit in your stomach at one time.
That’s the good spice.
Your mum’s radioactive
Cheap
Except when some genius at your local Walmart changes the price from $0.87/pound to $1.56/banana.
My store went from number 1 in sales of bananas in the country to dead last in just under a week because whoever set the prices was an idiot.
Also genetic diversity is in the crapper. One epidemic and we won’t have bananas anymore.
number 1 in sales of bananas in the country
Why do you know that data
Because I worked there, in the department that handled bananas.
Wow, we have Banana Man here
(I’m not assuming his gender, the profile says he’s male)
One epidemic and we won’t have bananas anymore.
Only for a few countries ;) There’s still a lot of banana varieties eaten around the world.
Well.
We wont have bananas that taste any good. The ones we eat are selectively bred to become seedless, and are thereby infertile, and must be cloned to be propagated.
The species would still exist, but we’d have to start over with developing a plant that produces something edible.
I would love to try two different bananas I have only ever read about:
-
The one that supposedly tastes like vanilla pudding
-
The one that no longer exists where banana flavoured candy derives its flavor from.
Unlike that artificial strawberry flavor that sucks compared to actual strawberries, I quite like the artificial banana flavor of candy over an actual banana (which, to me, barely has a flavor at all).
The one that no longer exists where banana flavoured candy derives its flavor from.
That’s actually a myth. See Wikipedia.
The Gros Michel has a higher concentration of isoamyl acetate, the ester commonly used for “banana” food flavoring, than the Cavendish.[12] This higher concentration is responsible for the myth that banana flavoring was based on the Gros Michel, but artificial banana flavor was not based on any specific cultivar.
-
We wont have bananas that taste any good.
Cavendish bananas aren’t the only varieties of bananas that taste good. For example Lakatan and Latundan taste good raw. It’s just that most of the time they aren’t feasible for export.
It’s just that most of the time they aren’t feasible for export.
I didn’t know that.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say we won’t have an edible banana that is suitable for large-scale industrial production.
wtf they’re like 50¢/lb here
There are a lot of types though. Walmart may not have them, but my little 4 meter by 3 meter patch has several varieties and produces enough bananas for about 4 families.
So someone will still have bananas.
name one bad thing about it.
Okay, the wages and working conditions of plantation workers (modern slaves). The cost of bananas in first-world countries is ridiculously low, and is demeaning to those who work hard to enable this privilege for us.
and is demeaning to those who work hard to enable this privilege for us.
For real! Keeping countries colonised in this day and age is hard work
They have strings and the little brown tip.
Bananas are acoustic guitars.
I have some bad news about bananas. The current strain we use as food is going extinct as the banana trees are ill and dying out. Luckily we’re already changing a different strain to be ready for consumption (making them bigger and without seeds because yes, wild bananas are full of seeds).
Also cocoa plants are ill and dying and we don’t have a different strain. So some time in the future we will be without chocolate.
The replacement for the Cavendish is already being sold commercially in Australia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_banana
And it’s pretty good, though I think Cavendish is better
How do they taste? I haven’t gotten to try one yet.
Like bananas
Thanks
Bananas have seeds? 😳
Yes, the wild ones. They’re delicious, way better than a Cavendish but full of hard, black seeds. Like this:
Wild bananas, yes.
The ones you eat are a perfect example of a genetically modified plant - cultivated specifically for human consumption.
they are also triploids, means they are sterile. they do some wierd things like forcing the original bananas to have unreduced gametes. Also note that polyploidy in planets allows them to do this naturally, also give a them evolutionary advantages, the ones that arnt odd number polyploids.
Like the other replies say, wild ones do. But the ones we eat used to have them too, but we did the same magic on them as we did on wolves by creating pugs. They used to be small and so full of seeds there was barily any eatable parts.
NO CHOCOLATE??? I can’t bear the thought of no chocolate
or using different species, like blue or red ones instead. wild ones have huge seeds.
It’s also not the first time it’s happened to bananas. You know how banana candy tastes so different to the real thing. That’s how the previous commercial strain used to taste before it was nearly exticted by disease.
I have had Gros Michel bananas. They do not taste like banana candy, although weirdly they do smell like the candy much more strongly than the Cavendish.
From what I understand people used to let them brown completely before eating them, which would have a different taste to what we consider ripe today. Also, it was used a lot more in cooking, which likely enhanced that particular flavor.
Except for there is like a 1 hour window when they taste really good and have a good texture. In between when they’re green and taste like chalk and when they’re full yellow and taste like mushy baby food.
Right in that 1 hour window? Delicious.
*Avocados have entered the chat*
I met someone that likes it a little green and not soft. We don’t talk anymore. /S
Sounds like mofongo which is fucking delicious!
The banana republics? The monoculture? The fact the ones in supermarket taste bland and it costs and arm and leg if you want one that tastes good?
Take your pick
Don’t forget the pesticides that are so fucked up that the farmers end up infertile
I can’t buy non organic bananas, I feel like I am castrating someone. But realistically probably organic also isn’t that much better.
Every corporation is practically lying because the only real truth is so riddickulously complicated that even doing research does not ever give a thorough understand of their true action, let alone their actual intent.
Corporations are the blood vein of the vampiritic nature of capitalism.
Mani Mani is the blood itself.
The Cavendish banana is a monoculture that your grandkids will never know, the same way that you’ve (very probably) never had a Gros Michel.
The Cavendish banana is a monoculture
Who could have guessed a group of banana cultivars is a method of growing crops
And yet supermarkets wrap them in plastic on a polystyrene tray…
That’s counterproductive in terms of shelf life, and just plain gross. If your market does this, vote with your wallet and go somewhere else.
Not mine specifically, but I’ve seen pictures online. It’s a complete garbage move and yeah, plain gross!
- comes in its own wrapper
- zero mess, zero cleanup, zero prep
Choose one.
Wrapper is edible though
After all the chemical treatment? Sorry, no.
Fun fact: The banana was actually a significant part of the industrial revolution. This was because coal miners could eat it without needing to wash their hands.
