[HN Gopher] What's Wrong with Bananas (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
What's Wrong with Bananas (2018)
Author : dnetesn
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-02-17 11:13 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com)
| amelius wrote:
| Crazy thing is that I can't find pure banana flavored ice cream
| in my local supermarket.
| unwind wrote:
| I 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.)_
| detourdog wrote:
| There is a McDonalds at the intersection of the Brooklyn Queens
| Expressway and the Cross Bronx Expressway. One time in the
| middle of the night I ordered whatever hamburger and received a
| double cheeseburger with fried onions(fried onions are not on
| the McDonalds menu).
|
| That same McDondalds on another visit I found the drive-thru
| worker head down sleeping on the counter.
|
| The exception that proves the rule. I remember that McDonald's
| hamburger.
| sandos wrote:
| In 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.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > with the peel left on
|
| So much food waste reduction by doing that.
| shaftway wrote:
| So... 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?
| teddyh wrote:
| MAX Burgers: https://www.maxburgers.com/
| elil17 wrote:
| They 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-i...
| steve1977 wrote:
| I always find it funny when people say "nature provides
| everything we need" and then refer to fruit like our current
| banana cultivars
| [deleted]
| JohnFen wrote:
| Nature may provide everything we need, but not everything we
| want.
|
| Nobody needs bananas.
| nirimda wrote:
| Nature provides everything we need, but sometimes nature's
| method of providing what we need is humans.
| taeric wrote:
| The best is when people learn that lemons were basically
| created by us. :D "When life refused to give you lemons, make
| them!"
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _What's Wrong with Bananas_ -
| 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 - Oct 2022 (22
| comments)
|
| _Parable of the Banana_ -
| 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
| - Aug 2019 (191 comments)
|
| _The Cavendish banana is facing extinction_ -
| 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 - Jan 2018 (110
| comments)
|
| _The Cavendish banana is under threat from a fungus_ -
| 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 - March 2017 (70
| comments)
|
| _The Miracle of the Modern Banana_ -
| 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 - Dec
| 2015 (24 comments)
|
| _How the global banana industry is killing the world's favorite
| fruit_ - 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 - May 2014 (7
| comments)
|
| _Fungus threatens top banana_ -
| 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 - Dec 2010 (35
| comments)[?]
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _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 maca, 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
|
| [2] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#Como_alimento
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Maybe 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
| Nursie wrote:
| Thailand has many as well.
|
| I'm often disappointed that here in Australia the Cavendish is
| so dominant. We do sometimes get Red Daccas, and lady-finger
| bananas but not a lot else. And can I find a fe'i? Nope...
|
| Going to be trying to grow ice-cream bananas soon I think!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yeah 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.
| jiveturkey42 wrote:
| Export markets are going to be defined by what can be
| traded in tonnages, not boutique luxury foods that are
| expensive and risky to ship, nor would any agriculture
| company risk the investment to cultivate them at scale for
| export from Mexico
| crazygringo wrote:
| They're not "boutique luxury foods", they're just normal
| fruit.
|
| And here in NYC a lot of the produce I buy comes from
| Mexico at scale, including things like ripe cherry
| tomatoes grown in greenhouses that are much more "luxury"
| than bananas. But also just everyday papayas and
| avocados.
|
| So given that so many fruits and vegetables are already
| cultivated at scale for export from Mexico, it's not
| clear why banana varieties are that different. To the
| contrary, all _sorts_ of new fruit varieties are being
| invested in, grown and shipped from other countries. Just
| yesterday I bought cara cara navel oranges and blood
| oranges too from my normal average supermarket, which
| certainly weren 't available here five years ago at an
| average store.
| deeviant wrote:
| What do you think the definition of a "boutique" fruit
| is, exactly?
|
| I would think it would have a lot less from being some
| actual boon from the gods and more a fruit in limited
| supply in the region of interest.
| sampo wrote:
| I 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-serious...
|
| https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/06/commercial-...
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/22/africa/banana-panama-dise...
| taeric wrote:
| The 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.
| Zababa wrote:
| It is the same thing as centralization/decentralization.
| Centralization is more efficient (economies of scale and
| other things) but more fragile.
| jandrese wrote:
| The problem is that monocultures enjoy great economies of
| scale, and it's extremely difficult to fight the market.
|
| The little farmer who grows a variety of crops is out-
| competed by the corn growing neighbor who has relatively
| cheap specialized equipment and seeds available to allow him
| to work ever larger and more productive fields for year after
| year. The little guy ends up closing shop before the neighbor
| gets wiped out by some highly specialized pathogen. As John
| Maynard Keynes noted, "Markets can stay irrational longer
| than you can stay solvent." Monocultures might be a bad idea
| in the long term, but for immediate profits they cannot be
| beat.
| searine wrote:
| The threat of monoculture is overblown.
|
| Yes if your entire society relies on one staple crop that
| has low diversity and no pest management, you are at high
| risk, but that is not modern society.
|
| If the cavendish is wiped out, people would barely notice.
| Even if it happened with corn, it would be disruptive, but
| not catastrophic. Our food system is too diversified to
| really collapse from one disease.
| taeric wrote:
| I grew up near a statue to the boll weevil. So, exactly.
| It can happen. Does even. Rubber trees, if I'm not
| mistaken, are another good example.
|
| Doesn't mean that specialization can't have obvious
| benefits.
| jzebedee wrote:
| Enterprise, AL?
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| The British switched from coffee to tea because their
| monoculture coffee plantations in what used to be called
| Ceylon died from blight. Their plantations were the
| descendants of 6 plants. A disease that affected one
| coffee bush affected every coffee bush.
|
| The Irish Potato Famine happened because their potatoes
| were descended from a single handful of potatoes. As a
| result, a fungus that affected one potato plant affected
| every other potato plant. About a million people died
| from that.
|
| The corn blight in 1970 resulted in the loss of 1/3 of
| the US corn crop. If the weather hadn't broken, up to 85%
| of that year's crop could have died. 85% of the seed
| grown back then used Texas Male Sterile Cytoplasm as part
| of the hybridization process. In response, the US
| government created and continues massive subsidies for
| corn production. This is why high fructose corn syrup is
| cheaper than cane/beet sugar, and why HFCS is so
| widespread in US food production.
|
| One book that covers the history of monoculture failures
| like this is _Altered Harvest_ :
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Altered-Harvest-Jack-
| Doyle/dp/0140096...
|
| One book that covers how prevalent corn is in American
| food production is _Omnivore 's Dilemma_.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Omnivores-Dilemma-Natural-History-
| Mea...
|
| The banana flavor used in candies tastes nothing like
| Cavendish bananas. That flavor was based on the Gros
| Michel variety that went economically extinct in the
| 1950s.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > The British switched from coffee to tea because their
| monoculture coffee plantations in what used to be called
| Ceylon died from blight.
|
| its quite unfortunate as srilankan coffee is quite good
| and tragically under appreciated. most locals will serve
| you nescafe as they think its "fancy"
| sclarisse wrote:
| The problem with bananas specifically is that if you don't
| have a seedless product, you don't have a product to sell at
| all.
|
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banana_cross_secti.
| ..
|
| And that means monocultures propagated from cuttings.
| pixl97 wrote:
| It's just an advanced form of 'hand to mouth' existence,
| maybe we should call it 'capital to wallet' The fact a crash
| will come tomorrow doesn't stop most actors from doing what's
| going to profit them the most today.
| taeric wrote:
| I think it is a little more nuanced, in practice. For a lot
| of amazing progress and such, the short term doubling down
| on something seems to make a ton of sense. As such, for the
| individual farmer and all, risky idea. For the town and the
| society, they can often ride the reward with minimal
| exposure to the risk.
|
| My personal pipe dream is that we found a way to not load
| so much downside of risks on individuals. Which seems to be
| what we do.
| blowski wrote:
| It's another example of "the tragedy of the commons". Each
| individual actor is acting in their own short-term
| interest, at the expense of everybody's long term interest.
| acchow wrote:
| I am seeing a renaissance in Apple varieties. Coffea is not a
| monoculture. Will other fruits and vegetables follow?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The bananapocalypse already happened:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Hence, the article...
| stewartbutler wrote:
| Eh, 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.
| eiiot wrote:
| There's a great freakonomics episode on exactly what's going on
| with bananas.
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-most-interesting-fruit-...
| poisonarena wrote:
| like 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
| giantg2 wrote:
| Simular 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.
| bannedbybros wrote:
| [dead]
| tnel wrote:
| I 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 25C/ to 50C/ usually.
| coolg54321 wrote:
| In kerala, India too we have so many varities of bananas
| Robusta, Palayankodan, Poovan, Njalipoovan, Kadali, Chenkadali,
| Karpooravally, Poomkalli, Koompillakannan, Chinali, Virupakshi,
| Plantain to name few.
|
| And in Europe i see everywhere only cavendishes or plantains
| unfortunately
| linuxftw wrote:
| There are many interesting cultivars of bananas. Cavendish is the
| worst banana available, and the sooner it goes extinct in mass
| ag, the better.
| 2ICofafireteam wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| I think the reason Cavendish is the main crop is because it
| can survive shipping and handling well. Most varieties of
| bananas can't.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Also also, Cavendish is a "dessert banana". Most banana
| varieties are more like plantains -- they're savory and
| are usually cooked.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Shipping, 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.
| coldpie wrote:
| I'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.
| 83 wrote:
| Red delicious are great for dehydrated apple chips. Though I
| admit I haven't found any use for them outside of that.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Fuji, and now cosmic crisp... Red delicious should only exist
| for pies
| kiliantics wrote:
| I 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.
| q845712 wrote:
| hard 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.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| This is what you need:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bramley_apple
|
| Apparently the tree is available in the US:
|
| https://www.orangepippintrees.com/trees/apple-
| trees/bramleys...
| Tagbert wrote:
| I 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.
| jollyllama wrote:
| Have 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.
| klyrs wrote:
| Red delicious is a terrible pie apple, unless you hate the
| flavor of apples and only want sugary cinnamonny mush.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| My 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.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I 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.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > 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/
|
| Yup, we can delay aging in apples and is standard since
| many decades ago
| ignite wrote:
| > 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-r...
|
| Same thing with tomatoes:
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/why-do-uk-tomatoes-taste-
| bad
| unmole wrote:
| Yeah, no. I'd choose a Robusta Cavendish over a sickly-sweet
| Chakkarakeli or a mealy Nendran any day.
| [deleted]
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Non-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
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(page generated 2023-02-17 23:02 UTC)