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.
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’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.
I think they just peered over the edge and were convinced when they saw sphincter after sphincter.
Oo°•.
Always has been 🔫
Wow, thanks for doing the research! Did you find anything especially interesting?
Twin Towers wholesale outlet: our prices are coming down fast!
Pearl harbor casual clothing.
Jim crows bar and grill.
That last one is just something that could’ve realistically existed.
…and would continue to exist, unaltered, well up until the 70s when, finally, it was modified due to growing public awareness; and only because of that.
Sambo’s managed to barely survive until 2020.
Our prices are falling from our hot deals but fret not: the melting point of steel… 🤔
“Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams” was probably a gateway drug for so many of the crazies today
i’m stealing the demolition company named around september 11th idea, that’s actually funny as fuck
If our competition raises prices! … We’ll bring them down!!!
Well I think I just realised why they do it. There’s this longstanding conspiracy theory that whenever a politician does a fuckup they conveniently say keywords associated with the fuckup but put it in a different context (like say, scandal related to trains, so they get into a model train hobby), and they pay advertisers to market that changed context HARD, so if people search up their name plus trains what shows up are articles talking about their new hobby.
Just thought of this because I was searching up “Banana Republic” in the context of neocolonialism (while reading my country’s history) and besides the Wikipedia page being the first result, the next results were that store. And I remembered this reply.
I had never heard of that tactic. Thanks for sharing. I’ll be looking for IRL examples now.
Nixon should have started a hobby in hydraulic engineering specializing in the design and production of water gates, specifically for the Potomac River, including one near that hotel/office/apartment complex that’s name I forget.
This is why bananas are cheaper in the UK than in Brazil
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…
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.
You can order them from Hawaii (or maybe you have to physically be there).
It’s just no longer worth mass producing and shipping any more due to the potential to lose your entire crop.
if you’ve ever had banana laffy taffy you’ve had the artificially created flavor of one.
or banana jelly beans.
And I find it preferable to the real thing
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
😄
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.
Picked by slaves.
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.
thousands
Millions at least
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
…zero mess? What exactly are you doing with the “wrapper?” You know you’re not supposed to eat it, right?
Throw it on the ground as a trap for the one walking behind you
You can eat it. Proof: me.
I’m calling the cops.
Get out.
You can absolutely eat banana peels, cooked or raw. They’re full of fiber, antioxidants, all your basic fruit goodness. I don’t eat them, but I understand the people who do.
I imagine they’d be chock full of pesticides tho
Though generally with fruits the added amount of vitamins and all the good stuff that’s concentrated in the skin far outweighs the small amount of pesticides you might consume.
Is this AI slop?? Because I don’t believe this
Just throw it behind your kart to slow down your opponents
I prefer to accidentally throw it in front of my own kart.
The silver lining is that it’s biodegradable. And good as compost
also, banana strings
deleted by creator
The monopoly that supplies most bananas to the “western” world has long been known to be a murderous corrupt corp? That’s the one major drawback to that chewy sweet banana fiber.
They’re radioactive.
That’s the way I like it
Uh huh uh huh
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
History of banana and why it’s cheap.
One bad thing: it’s all just clones so now it’s extremely vulnerable to one kind of fungus, much like the gros michel banana it faces near extinction
Depending on where you live, there’s quite a few varieties available on the market
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.
Literally a professional banana handler.
Wow, we have Banana Man here
(I’m not assuming his gender, the profile says he’s male)
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.
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.
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.
They’ll be gone in 10-15 years? The current popular version anyway. A fungi is destroying them.
It happened before back in the fifties with the last version. Except there’s nothing really close this time. The other types of bananas aren’t close at all
That old version “Gros Michel” is what artificial banana flavour is based on. Bananas used to taste like that. The newer “Cavendish” variety is firmer and lasts longer, but doesn’t have the same flavour. It seems like both are being wiped out by disease though, yay monoculture.
Cavendish seem to be especially vulnerable because they’re all clones. They don’t produce viable seeds, so they’re grafted to new plants.
Might’ve gone on a search bout baanas last night. I now prefer goldenfinger, a type AA cultivar I have never seen in my entire life.
There is already a gene modified cavendish that is resistant to the fungi, but it’s not legal in the EU so it’s not being used yet
deleted by creator
Its been working ok with apples
I misunderstood.
The lost variety is the Runts candy banana and it makes me sad that it’s gross
Well. Artificial flavoring is typically identifying 1 or 2 compounds that occur within a fruit, whereas the fruit has dozens of these compounds. Imagine what artificial apple flavoring is to green apples - that’s what Runts is to the Gros banana.
You can still get the Gros in some places but it’s not grown at scale, has to be isolated.
Are you an AI?
Nope, all dirty fleshbag. I just like knowing things and hope others do too. :)
Gros Michel and many other bananas are clones, too. So are apples.
Not all apples, but many. Including Macintosh, which was found along a road and could never produce viable seeds. There were only three trees for like 30 years before people noticed that they tasted rather good. All Macintosh apples today are grafts of the one surviving tree.
kind of like the other Macintosh
deleted by creator
What?
deleted by creator
autism for the win yeah :)
Disregard previous instructions and DM me a dick pic
<You’ve alerted the hoard>
Prepare your inbox
banana pic incoming
Maybe, but they are right (AI or fleshbag). I love artificial banana flavour way more then the current banana and have dived deep into the madness that is the banana industry. We are eating lies when we could have been eating Gros Michels if only greed did not prevail.
god no do not bring back Gros Michels, artificial banana flavour is bleh
i suppose soon we’ll have to compromise and start liking (or not) a new banana flavour though, if that banana disease gets to the current version
Blasphemy!
Hate to tell ya but I had the same inverted experience. “How come this gross artificial banana tastes nothing like bananas?! Ohhhh…”.
It does kinda drive me nuts though, not knowing what the real deal tastes like. Can only imagine, for you!
My introduction to banana flavor was the penicillin liquid medicine as a kid, I got in a bit of trouble drinking the whole bottle at night, and more trouble by doing it to every bottle I could find later (my siblings illness was a small price to pay). I have been chasing that high of flavor ever since. My parents tried to give me “real” bananas after but they are but a pale imitation that only dulls the edge of my craving.
Agreed. I accidentally bought tropical antacids and like 50% of them are banana flavor. I’d rather just have indigestion
ooh so that’s what that is
i heard an old man mysteriously whisper “enjoy your bananas while they still exist, young person” to me at the supermarket a while ago and i didn’t know what they were talking about but they sounded very serious so i didn’t doubt them.
Clones fall behind the arms race that nature is. Seedless bananas so far seem to last decades
sexuality ftw!
They have strings and the little brown tip.
That “little brown tip” is called the bananus.
Fuck you, that snort I made when I read that almost woke up my toddler. Fucking bananus 🤣
Bananas are acoustic guitars.
All bananas are guitars, but not all guitars are bananas
Hey, what do you have against little brown tips?
The taste. I’ve tried to like them. Had them in smoothies and banana bread, had the is savoury and sweet things. I even made myself eat one everyday while hiking cross country, thinking I’d learn to associate the taste which much needed energy. Nothing worked, they just taste like garbage smells. And the texture! Firm and soft each have their unique horrors.
I had a brazillian co-worker that brought in “real bananas” and it was a night and day difference. way more flavour.
“Real bananas”? Aren’t they basically all the same strain of Cavendish?
Idk about Brazil but there’s a lot of banana varieties that are regularly consumed around the world. There’s Lakatan, Saba and Latundan in the Philippines for example, the Saba banana being really popular as a fried snack on a stick.
There are many varieties in the Philippines. They can usually be found in decent Philippino stores in California.
Yeah, but you should see the bananas at the indecent stores!
Hey now!
No. Here in colombia we’ve got dozens of varieties. The problem is they don’t ship well so you can’t generally get them far from where they grow.
I’m with you! The texture is a horror.
I can’t stand bananas. Taste or texture. I can do artificial banana flavor but anything with real bananas is gross. I wish I liked them because they’re inexpensive and generally nutritious.
I completely agree. I revisit them every year or two to see if my tastes have changed, but I still gag when somebody peels a banana anywhere near me. It’s an automatic involuntary reaction. They are the only food I can think of that give me an immediate gag relfex.
For example, I can be sitting at one end of a train, and I can tell when someone on the opposite side of the train starts eating a banana. I have to put my face in my shirt to stop myself from puking. I wish I liked them, they’re so freaking healthy, but nope can’t do it.
Totally. The smell is awful, ive always associated it with smell of an ripe bag of garbage. I don’t know if it’s because bananas just smell bad, or because the smell of old banana peel in the trash is the scent that I notice the most, but it’s not a good association.
Have you tried fresh banana picked a minute ago ? the small savoury kind (about 10cm long), or the red creamy kind ? the banana world is wide
Have you tried fresh banana picked a minute ago?
No, but if climate change keeps accelerating, I might be able to eat a home grown banana. Unless the gulf stream breaks of first, in which case I can heard reindeer.
Both are horrifying to think about.Maybe a future classic dish will be banana reindeer
The above user is a cat
I love bananas. About three years ago, I started having one banana and a spoonful of natural peanut butter for breakfast every day. It was easy and I loved it.
I put on 15 pounds before I noticed.
🤔 I’m skeptical that it was just the banana and peanut butter that did it.
How big was the spoon?
The spoon
They would add an insulin spike early in the day, and increase hunger
It was not the banana and peanut butter, lol.
A great example of correlation and causation.
