[HN Gopher] Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste
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Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste
Author : geox
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-03-08 12:41 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| whoitwas wrote:
| They slowed the ripening process. It does turn brown, just
| slower. Clickbait is clickbait.
| giarc wrote:
| I'd disagree. Title is appropriate "could cut food waste" is
| very true and pretty mild. A clickbait title would be "Gene-
| edited non-browning bananas will solve food waste problem"
| whoitwas wrote:
| It's mild click bait. They aren't slamming hunger in the
| nuts, my point is the banana turns brown. It's not "non-
| browning".
| jmclnx wrote:
| What, no more banana bread :(
| CaffeineLD50 wrote:
| Indeed. Better food management fixes it without crispr.
| karmakaze wrote:
| No problem, someone will make a banana browning machine for the
| purpose.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| For a small monthly subscription it will brown1 your bananas.
|
| _1 Final color of banana may not actually be brown._
| vacuity wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
|
| Food waste will not be addressed properly without cultural
| shifts. Granted, certain technological improvements may prompt
| them, but that's a bit backwards of a problem solving method.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I wonder if things like tipping culture will encourage people
| to eat at home and be more mindful about their consumption. I
| hate being extorted for 25% tips and then told if I can't
| afford the 25% then I shouldn't be eating out.
|
| Kind of how the hatred of dealing with printer companies and
| their extortionist ink prices accelerated the shift to
| paperless.
|
| So maybe we'll get to a better state, perhaps not through the
| means we expected.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| I bet current US government's economic policies will be even
| more effective at reducing food waste. Food waste will be
| radically reduced when the prices skyrocket, and the masses
| can barely afford their groceries, let alone eating out.
| Tariffs combined with deportations of agricultural labor will
| likely lead to that outcome.
| pipe2devnull wrote:
| 25%? That's so high. Most places in the USA I feel like
| 18-20% is the norm
| eigenspace wrote:
| 18-20% is already completely insane.
| marky1991 wrote:
| I was always taught that 15% is the standard and that's all
| I give.
| dehrmann wrote:
| It was in 1995. We briefly flirted with 18%, but it's 20%
| now. At least for restaurants, taxis, and barbers. I've
| been prompted for tips at self checkout kiosks and tip a
| generous 0%.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I don't remember where, I think the reason 25% sticks in my
| mind is because I usually do 20% and tend not to think
| about it. I did stop going to restaurants because of it but
| I would still go to fast food / take outs and then they
| started requesting tips before they even made the food. The
| increased in cost on top of the tip felt like small scale
| extortion - what are you going to do to the food if I don't
| pay. So now I just cook at home and save a bunch of money
| and I wonder how many others are doing the same.
| scns wrote:
| 10% is the norm here.
| hx8 wrote:
| I'm not sure that eating out solves the food waste problem.
| I'll agree that in theory centralizing food preparation could
| lead to increased efficiency, but in practice eating out is
| most often either a luxury or convince experience and
| emphasizes those two things much more than cost or
| efficiency. Maybe one day automation can reduce labor costs
| allowing restaurants to sell cheaper food, but no one has
| seemed to figure out that problem yet.
|
| In addition to price (which is a function of efficiency), I
| wouldn't shift any more of my eating behavior to out of the
| house until the following problems are solved.
|
| * Portion sizes. I usually eat 600-800 calories in a sitting
| at home. This portion size is considered a light meal in
| restaurants, and generally has less appealing options and
| ordering it sends weird social signals.
|
| * Healthier food. Most restaurants use more oils and salt
| than my preference. The vegetables and fruit are usually less
| fresh than even Walmart/Kroger offers.
|
| * Time investment. I can cook and clean maybe 25 different
| dishes in less than 20 minutes of focused work at home. Much
| more if you count semi-prepared foods that come frozen or in
| boxes. The only thing that competes with time investment is
| hot food delivery, which comes at about a 8x price premium
| compared to cooking.
| AJ007 wrote:
| Another problem is you have no transparency with what
| ingredients restaurants are really using. Even if you know
| today, with certainty, you can't be sure tomorrow. Usually
| small chains will start out very high on the quality scale
| for suppliers and ingredients, and then swap them out as
| they scale/suddenly need to not lose money.
|
| Food is tricky because once you have food processed or
| prepared, and you don't have the raw ingredients, you
| really have no fucking clue what you are ingesting. Most
| people act, and assume that they do.
| batch12 wrote:
| I used to wait tables. With that said, I also don't like that
| wait staff costs are hidden from the menu price of a meal. It
| also seems very rich person cosplay to decide how much I
| should pay my servant wench after a meal. Even more
| irritating is the request to tip now for almost any food
| purchase and to-go order at the register. One doesn't even
| know where that tip goes. The food prep person? Cook? Expo?
| Split? To the restaurant? Who knows?
| karmakaze wrote:
| The price of bananas are artificially low anyway, so increasing
| delivery efficiency will make the same prices less artificial.
| thih9 wrote:
| > Increasing the yield of a crop, such as wheat, for a given
| area will reduce the area required to achieve the same total
| yield. However, increasing efficiency may make it more
| profitable to grow wheat and lead farmers to convert land to
| the production of wheat, thereby increasing land use instead.
|
| Off topic, if we apply this to AI, in theory we could work
| less, with AI making us more efficient and allowing us to
| achieve the same results. But because we are humans, we are
| going to value our work less, and ask ourselves to work more.
| marky1991 wrote:
| From the wikipedia article: "As an example of where the paradox
| did not occur, large improvements in farming productivity
| (including the Third Agricultural Revolution) led to lower food
| prices but did not result in increased demand for food. (Demand
| for food is inelastic.) This instead led to lower employment in
| the farming sector, which declined from 40% of Americans in
| 1900 to less than 2% in 2024.[14]"
|
| But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is
| about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-
| browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
| vacuity wrote:
| Thank you for pointing out that food demand is inelastic,
| that does shift my perspective somewhat. A complication about
| demand for food is that American culture promotes luxury and
| overindulgence. Still not elastic, but more food waste than
| is "normal". In general, buying more food should cause more
| food waste.
|
| > But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox
| is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a
| non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
|
| I think cost is not as relevant here, moreso that people will
| buy more bananas, as they will brown less quickly, but will
| often overshoot.
| neoecos wrote:
| I'm guessing the impact on this from the GLP drugs. I
| remember a post last week about the impact on the economy
| of the growing usage of this appetite suppression drugs.
| vivzkestrel wrote:
| what are the long term effects of consuming such a banana daily?
| ada1981 wrote:
| Avocados could use this.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Gene-editing the Atheist's Nightmare is sacrilege!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A
| maury91 wrote:
| I have noticed that putting bananas in the fridge has a weird
| effect, the peel turns black like if it's outside, but the inside
| of the banana stays yellow and hard. It is very weird to peel a
| full black banana and find the inside normal without any browning
| morkalork wrote:
| I see this all the time with bananas that go from green to
| brown without turning yellow, I always heard people blame the
| bananas getting too cold during shipping.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Counter argument: _40 Recipes for Ripe and Overripe Bananas_
|
| https://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/vegan-menus-collecti...
| atonse wrote:
| Yeah I get a little excited when I see an overripe banana in my
| house cuz I know my wife's going to make banana nut bread and
| we're gonna finish it all in an hour.
| owlstuffing wrote:
| Most banana varieties actually taste best and last longer as they
| start to brown (ripen).
|
| The Cavendish--the dominant grocery store banana--is one of the
| few that turns mushy and unpleasant when it does.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I think the Cavendish is better when slightly browned too, it's
| much sweater. Basically, not edible to me when it's just
| yellow. There is just a certain point when it stops being good.
| contingencies wrote:
| Benefits of green: Lower sugar, higher in 5-HTP (potential
| mood enhancer, sleep enhancer, anti-anxiety).
| https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-794/5-htp
|
| Benefits of brown: Sweeter, softer, better for making banana
| bread :)
| https://www.womensweeklyfood.com.au/recipe/baking/banana-
| bre...
| throw-qqqqq wrote:
| I prefer the cavendish a little green and unripe, but not so
| green it leaves my mouth dry from the tannins.
|
| When slightly green, it has a more veggie-like taste and not
| the super sweet and pungent banana smell/taste. I don't like
| them when yellow/browning.
|
| Horses for courses I guess :)
| crazygringo wrote:
| This article seems to be (intentionally?) confusing two different
| things.
|
| It seems to suggest this is about preventing unpeeled bananas
| from browning (yellow becomes spots becomes brown). Because it
| starts "Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe
| banana" and continues "designed to have a longer shelf life".
|
| But the actual details are not that. It is merely:
|
| > _said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being
| peeled_
|
| Huh? First of all, I don't know if half-eaten bananas are a major
| problem with food waste. People usually eat a whole one. And who
| cares about the peel remaining yellow _after it 's peeled_...?
| The flesh of a Cavendish banana is off-white, not yellow...
|
| It also says:
|
| > _and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during
| harvesting and transportation._
|
| Is that a thing? Bananas are usually hard and green during these
| phases. If they're damaged so much they turn brown while unripe,
| I don't think I still want to eat them...
| ebiester wrote:
| But how does it taste?
|
| Does it sacrifice taste? Did anyone look at that?
| GoToRO wrote:
| Trying to prevent food waste is silly. There is plenty of food
| where people are organized and no food where they are not.
| Agriculture needs stability, you need to be sure that after one
| year of work, you can reap the benefits of that work. This does
| not happens in places where any guy with an AK can come and steal
| your crop. It's like a comedian (sightly obese) said: "my Mom
| said there are hungry children in Africa so I should finish my
| food. So I did. Hope that helped" (paraphrasing). The irony is
| that it really doesn't help. The shortage in food is caused by
| other problems.
| beeforpork wrote:
| The brown ones are the most delicious. It's always the same with
| these novel foods -- they taste terrible, but no-one seems to
| care.
| DonaldFisk wrote:
| > We're eating today the same bananas as our grandparents were
| eating in the 1950s.
|
| No, we're not. Back in the 1950s our grandparents were eating
| Gros Michel bananas. Now, we're eating (by all accounts) inferior
| Cavendish bananas.
|
| https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/history-of-the-gros-m...
| namuol wrote:
| The short shelf life of things like bananas gave us wonderful
| foods like banana bread. It's really not as big of a problem if
| we are just more responsible with the food we buy. But I say this
| mostly as a "yes, and..."
| tylerflick wrote:
| Browning is a feature not a bug.
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