Brown Bananas & Teenagers

Bananas are great because they are cheap sources of starch and potassium. For most of us also, they are fairly cheap at well under a dollar per pound. Consider that against strawberries at around $4 per pound and other berries at nearly twice that price. My only problem is that unlike other fruit, once in your market, bananas really only have a shelf life of about 5 - 7 days before they get uncomfortably sweet, mushy and covered in brown spots.

By the start of the second week if you have not cut that banana up into your cereal or passed it along to your pet monkey, the only remaining uses will be in banana bread, shakes, and thickener for off-brand hair gel. Most people prefer slightly ‘un-ripened’ bananas with a full yellow skin, green tip, and few spots. The brown spots are simply the carbohydrates converting to sugar and are a good relative marker for sweetness of the fruit. Don’t you wish other fruit (or children) were as kind to tell you when they are going to be REALLY SWEET? How many times have you purchased a perfectly good looking watermelon or cantaloupe that passed the ‘thump’ test but was still really flavorless inside?

For about 8 years when I lived in a warmer climate, I grew dwarf bananas for fun. They are just like full sized bananas and taste the same but they are about half the size. I loved those trees because they mostly took care of themselves and always looked leafy and tropical green even when not producing fruit. But when the bananas started to show up, then we were in a mad dash to get rid of hands upon hands of bananas to everyone we knew. They were ‘fingers’ energy for fast snacks and sack lunches but they ripened very quickly and reproduced even faster.

My daughter once did a study on the gas production given off by bananas. During ripening, they exude minute quantities of ethylene gas (a fruit hormone) which if in close proximity to other bananas encourages faster maturing. Professional growers actually induce ethylene into a high humidity environment to get bananas to ripen all at the same time. This makes shipping easier and the consumer receives better tasting and more consistent quality fruit. This is true of other fruit as well so generally, if you want to keep your bananas and fruit from ripening, browning, and growing old too quickly, separate them and keep them away the sun and each other. See now, you never knew how much you could learn about parenting from a greasy brown banana. Just keep your hormonal teens away from each other and the sun so they will stay young longer and age tan-less and spot- free!