Bananas : a thread

Been working on produce this week and have become transfixed by people’s habits when buying bananas.

My favourite is when folk open the drawers beneath the main fixture and then rip open a new box; undo the plastic wrap and think they’ve got a big win because they are fresher.

Mate: most supermarket bananas are at least 2-3 weeks old: picking/packing in somewhere like Ecuador or Costa Rica truck on a ship for a week truck ripening warehouse for 5-6 days truck DC truck supermarket on shelf next day

Both the shipping and the ripening process involves gases and temperatures that I won’t get into here.

The average time a bunch of bananas spends on a busy supermarket shelf is about an hour tops. So, opening a box gets you a product that is an hour fresher for something that is at least 336 hours old. Small victories I guess.

Some shoppers object to wet and/or green bananas. All the bananas come out of the box wet and green. The moisture evaporates in about 15 mins and the bananas start visibly yellowing immediately. Problem solved.

The next issue is bunches. The bunches come off the tree with a random number of bananas. Some people only want five bananas, so will tear three off a bunch of eight. And so on. This can cause damage and leads to the creation of pairs and single bananas.

For some odd reason, few people buy pairs or single bananas. So the shop ends up with loads of unwanted single bananas. Luckily, these days, waste like this goes to charity, animal feed and compost in that order.

But if you are concerned about food waste: don’t dismember bunches of bananas and/or consider assembling your own bespoke artisan bunch of bananas from those unwanted singles.

Thank you for coming to my banana talk