Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

The (true!) Story Thus Far...

THE BANANA IS IN CRISIS. A killer disease has spread across half the planet, threatening to wipe out the fruit that we eat. At the same time, varieties of bananas that millions - across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific - depend upon as part of their daily diet are also menaced. Why? Because the world's oldest, most popular fruit is a singularly weak, singularly odd organism. What's being done? The biggest banana companies have said little and acted less. In labs across the world, however, scientists are racing to find new ways to breed the fruit, to make it stronger - even as their counterparts comb the planet's most remote jungles and forests, searching for hidden and unknown varieties, one of which might hold the key to saving our - and the world's - favorite fruit.

That's what my book is about. And this blog. Plus pudding recipes.

British Supermarket "Banana Hammocks"

New banana shelving at British markets. Photo: Guardian.

Tesco, the British supermarket chain, is unveiling what is the first real change in the way bananas are sold and displayed in stores since the variety of fruit we eat today - called Cavendish - arrived in the 1960s to replace its disease-destroyed predecessor. (Our Cavendish is a fragile, and had to be bagged and boxed; the older fruit, Gros Michel, was tough, and was simply sent to stores in giant bunches.) Tesco's "hammocks," pictured above, cradle the fruit, preventing it from bruising.

Though the primary motivator seems to be preventing waste - tons of roughed-up Cavendish are discarded each year - a second advantage, a Tesco produce manager told the Guardian newspaper, is that the shelving allows the chain to fine-tune ripeness, offering fruit at "all stages" between yellow and green.

What's most interesting isn't what this means for the banana industry now, but for the future. With the Cavendish breed under attack by a deadly and incurable fungus, new breeds are eventually going to arrive at our stores. From what we know, they are likely to be varieties even more fragile than the fruit we eat today. While this is primarily a problem at the growing and shipping end of the banana supply chain, developing ways to present and maintain delicate fruit to consumers is also key.  Tesco seems to have made a huge leap in solving that problem.

A Guide to Those "Baby" Bananas - and What They Prove

Huggable, lovable - but not the kind of baby banana that I'm talking about.

Though the vast majority of bananas we buy - statistically, all - are of the endangered Cavendish variety, there's a good chance you've seen something else, these days and if you're a banana-type (or have become one), you might have wondered: what are those little bananas?

Both Chiquita and Dole offer versions of the half-sized fruit, with Chiquita selling them under the "Minis" brand, and Dole offering them as "Baby" bananas.

In the "big" banana world, there's absolutely no difference between what Chiquita, Dole (or any other commercial banana importer) sells: everything is Cavendish. Action surrounds small-time fruit. For the first time in over a century, the two biggest banana companies are slugging it out for a market niche with different varieties.

The Chiquita "Mini" is a breed called Pisang Mas, originally from Malaysia, but now - like all bananas imported to the U.S. - grown in Latin America.

Dole actually sells three different varieties under the Baby band name - Orito, Lady Finger, and Manzano.

The fruit are tough to find, since they're in various stages of test-marketing, as well as subject to seasonal variation. They also cost about three times as much as their ordinary counterparts. But they're worth seeking out, and not just because they prove - possibly for the first time to the average American consumer - that there's something beyond the generic banana. Though the four types share some characteristics (beyond size), they're also quite different from each other.

I've put together a guide to the four varieties, but one caveat: no great banana arrives easily. Dole doesn't distinguish between the three types it offers - they're all labelled the same - so side-by-side taste tests are going to be tough. But persevere. The results will be worth it (and ignore the for-kids marketing that the banana giants have attached to the product. Sure, they are great after school, as Chiquita's says. But this isn't baby food.)

Oh, and one more thing, and you MUST do this, or else your adventure in little bananas will surely fail: LITTLE BANANAS TASTE HORRIBLE UNTIL THEY'RE RIPE - AND RIPE, FOR LITTLE BANANAS, IS NOT YELLOW! You need to let the fruit turn brown or else it will not be sweet or soft enough. This will go against every banana extinct you have been trained to adhere to. Trust me.

CHIQUITA'S PISANG MAS (BRAND NAME: MINI)

• Super sweet - but only when very ripe. This is a fruit that is awesome when "peaking," but the peak can be hard to catch. When not peaking, not so good.
• Thin-skinned, so it bruises easily.
• IDENTIFYING: Easy. The only one Chiquita sells.

DOLE'S BABY (TYPE II - ORITO):

Orito Banana, from Ecuador's Goldenforce.

• Possibly the sweetest of the four varieties - making it (when ripe - see above) one of the best bananas for smoothies.
• Grown almost exclusively in Ecuador, where labor laws are weak, making this a very high-margin, high-political cost fruit.
• Identification: Chubby. If the country of origin is Ecuador, almost definitely Orito.

DOLE BABY (TYPE II - LADY FINGER):

Ladyfinger, meet Cavendish. Photo: Australian Tropical Fruits Portal

• Similar peaking/ripening characteristics as Pisang Mas.
• Doesn't easily turn brown when cut, making it perfect for fruit salads.
• Susceptible to Panama Disease Race One, the malady that killed the first worldwide commercial banana crop - and which still exists today.
• Closer to a mini-Cavendish in appearance. Slender(ish.) Super popular in Australia, so if you've got an Aussie in tow ask him or her for identification help.

DOLE BABY (TYPE III - MANZANO/APPLE):

The chubby Manzano, or "apple" banana. Photo: Thrifty Foods

• Falls into the "apple" banana category - giving it a unique, tangy-sweet taste. Much less bland than our Cavendish, but some banana marketers have traditionally believed that consumers would reject such a different-flavored fruit.
• Definitely the most "gourmet" banana of the bunch.
• Small ripeness/sweetness issue. Can be eaten a little bit less brown if you like the tart flavor, but you must wait beyond brown - until the skin is black - for the highest sugar content (which will give you a fabulous, multi-dimensional bite.)
• Difficult to grow in wet, lowland conditions
  
• Easier to find than others - sold under many brand names (or none at all) in Latin markets, where it is often a Mexican import.
• Identification tips: Significantly fatter, chunkier than Cavendish and probably the other little bananas, as well.

Once you've tried a couple, it's worth thinking a bit about what this all means in a world where the single fruit that we generally eat is threatened with practical extinction. The arrival of these alternate bananas in our markets shows that variety is possible, and that the commercial banana companies are willing to experiment with it (even with the for-kids-only marketing tilt.)

Despite this, the banana companies are likely very hesitant to move the fruit into any testing beyond these niches. The reason is that - according to conventional industry wisdom - there's simply too much "wrong" with the pint-sized fruit. The main arguments against mainstreaming mini-bananas include:

• Ripening. All of these fruit must be quite dark to taste good. The banana companies are (rightly?) afraid that the typical consumer is so well conditioned toward seeing a golden banana as perfect that wider acceptance would simply never occur.
• Production. The varieties in question can't be grown as broadly, geographically speaking, as Cavendish. There probably isn't enough land in Latin America to make any one of these varieties anything near to a market share winner.
• Shipping: These are thin-skinned fruit. Today's banana supply chain is so industrialized that the little fruit don't fit into it, requiring costly "custom" handling all along the way. For an industry built on turning an exotic tropical fruit into a commodity as cheap and ubiquitous as a fast-food burger, the idea of reinventing itself to handle more complex products may feel both financially and culturally risky.
• Marketing. People buy bananas by the bunch. Would the price/weight equation shift with a smaller banana as our main choice, or even as a more prominent alternate? The banana has been America's favorite fruit - by far - since the 1920s. Changing the very size, shape, and price of that fruit into something completely new would be a terrifying prospect for the banana companies, which introduced the fruit to us, struggled to make it our favorite, and have fought - often spilling blood - to keep it exactly the same ever since.

Despite all this, change has to come.

All of these arguments are based on a single premise: that the banana we eat today will last forever. It won't. It might not even last a decade.

The truth is that, as a living organism, all bananas have strengths, and all bananas have weaknesses. The biggest weakness the world's banana crop has today, though, has nothing to do with the fruit itself: it has to do with the human folly of relying on a single variety to feed millions.

The half-sized varieties from Chiquita and Dole are not, I'm told, doing all that well at the market. Some of Dole's farms in Ecuador that were devoted to the Orito fruit are reported to have closed. But the proof of concept - getting the fruit from there to here, figuring out how to market and sell it - has been accomplished, and despite my frequent criticism of the banana companies, there's credit deserved for that.

The experiment, however, needs to be seen as more than just marketing. The biological common sense - and necessity - of breaking the Cavendish monoculture needs to be acknowledged, as well. It is in combining salesmanship with this common sense that will lead the industry away from the dead end it is now rapidly heading toward. The "Mini" and "Baby" fruit provide a blueprint - even, focused as it is on children, it appears to have been written in crayon.

Banana Science

This is NOT a banana split!

Snob.

The New York Times has been very kind to me, but one has to say that a banana split where:

• There's no strawberry, pineapple, or chocolate sauce.
• There's something called "ganache."
• There are no nuts.
• The dish is not "boat" shaped.
• AND ICE CREAM IS FREAKIN' OPTIONAL!!!!

has to be a bunch of hooey and snobbery. Get it together. Really.

Here's NYT's "banana split" for snobs.

Here's the real deal at BananasWeb.

"Banana" is a "Low-Probability" Word for Typographical Errors

Above: The world's most beautifully designed search engine. Wikimedia Commons License.

That's according to the very cool Typo of the Day for Librarians blog, which posts a single word each day and - by searching electronic catalogues - determines how high the chances are that it will be misspelled in those records. They also add a little snippet about the word in question, and when the name of the world's best-loved fruit was chosen, I was happy to see that a mini-review of my book was included. 

I think the first impression one might have on encountering this site is one of novelty, but there's cool utility here, as well. Though modern search engines automatically  recognize frequently misspelled words and do the correcting for you, but the TOTDFL blog is conducting real-time research in how mistakes appear and behave in both the digital realm and - via the collections that the databases link to - the analog world, as well. 

According to the site - which solicits participation from librarians all over the world - he word "banana" has a low chance of being misspelled. The database the group searched found seven bad versions of the word (the commonly used "Bannana," which most spell-checkers catch.)

Great site for word geeks, and thanks for making an example of me. I'm glad they didn't comb my book for spelling errors, of which my readers have found over a dozen (one day, I promise, I'll post a list of corrections - spelling and factual - here, so feel free to mail me your own lists of my screw-ups.)

Star Trek Day at Bananabook.org - and a new T-Shirt of the Month...

The new movie is out. To celebrate (OK, this is a stretch) I offer this post, featuring a t-shirt I encountered when I went to see a lecture by George Takei - aka Mr. Sulu, of the original version of the series, and the subsequent movies - at the California Institute of Technology last month. The organizer wore an awesome banana-themed shirt.

     

Backstory on the shirt: the organizer told me that a couple of years ago, a banana scavenger hunt was held on campus. Students were required to steal as many different variations on the fruit as they could - pictures, books, or actual edible product. The garment was home-designed as a symbol of the merry adventure. 

(Also: the speech was amazing. Takei is a gay-rights activist, and he told the story of how, as a boy, he was among those Japanese-Americans forcibly removed to internment camps during World War II, and how the loss of civil rights for his family was no different than it is today for gays denied the right - among others - to marriage. Somehow, Takei managed to credibly link this to the vision of the future that Star Trek - and especially Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry - first brought to the screen in the 1960s. I completely bought it, but of course, I'm already on board, as my secret past indicates.)

And - not unbelievably, if you're a fan - Memory Alpha, the online ST compendium of everything, actually includes TWO banana-related entries in its official encyclopedia of the nearly fifty-year-old cultural phenomenon. Here and here and here.

And yes, the film opened today. I've timed this post to appear literally as I'm sitting down to see it in Hollywood's fabulous Cinerama Dome!

The Kindest Fan Letter Ever...

Don't be puzzled over why I'm posting about my other book. (Sorry...)

The letter, which I got last week, wasn't for "Banana." It was for my previous book, "To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession," and it came from Nicole Foucault, of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, in the form of a word search puzzle which she created, using words and phrases related to the book and to birding.

Here's what Nicole wrote:

Dear Mr. Koeppel,

I loved reading 'To See Every Bird on Earth!' Here is a word search game I created with vocabulary from your book. You may reproduce and use my game. If not, please destroy and recycle the enclosed copy."

Thank you,

Nicole Foucault

Destroying Nicole's lovely masterpiece was not an option. So I'm posting it here instead. Clicking on the thumbnail will download a PDF that you can complete yourself.

Click the image to download the puzzle.

Report: Disney may be planning "Hannah Montana Banana."

Image from Slate.

Commercial bananas have always been about brutal corporate trampling of the world. Disney hopes to extend its reach in that regard to our food supply, as Slate speculates on the company's plan to offer fruit and eggs (!) branded with its lineup of teen idols. 

Image from hell.

I won't offer further comment.

Australian Bananas - only - for Australian Flights

 EVIDENCE: Qantas passenger Toni Rogers found this non-Aussie sticker on her in-flight banana. Image: Cairns Post.

Australia and the Philippines both have banana problems: Panama Disease, the wilt that threatens the world's commercial banana crop, is present in both places. Australia's banana industry is reeling from the malady, which it is attempting - with little success -  to contain by quarantining infected plantations. 

The controversy began two weeks ago, when a passenger on a flight from New Zealand noticed that the Cavendish banana she was served bore a Philippine sticker. Within days, Australian banana growers and politicians were demanding Qantas stop serving non-native fruit - both as an issue of national pride and to protect the country's banana crop. At first, the airline resisted, but last week, it gave in.

So, is this "threat" for real? Panama Disease is easy to spread. A little bit of dirt could conceivably 

begin a chain of infection for a continent. But there's not much dirt on a washed, picked banana that comes to an airport caterer from a wholesale grocer, as the fruit served aboard Qantas at either end of its flights does. Randy Ploetz, one of the top researchers in Panama Disease -  he identified the strain that is currently spreading worldwide - says that "the probability of this being a problem seems pretty remote. I'd see this mainly as a symbolic gesture in support of their ongoing campaign." 

I agree - though I'm not sure what the symbolism represents to dismayed Philippine growers, or to passengers on inbound Qantas flights who now have to satisfy themselves with peanuts. 

No Cups or Glasses Necessary...

This is a demonstrator project created by Japanese designer Naoto Fukasawa. I love the idea, because it really does capture what a banana skin is. The colors, shape, and texture are perfect.

Here's Fukasawa's design for a strawberry juice box:

Here's a second version, with a similar design. This one is actually on the market in Japan, I'm told, which is why it is less clean: the package needed information on it.

Less clean, but still lovely compared to some of our stateside juice packaging horrors:

and:

You get the idea.

Thanks for the tip, Dimitri (again!)

Video Review: Pudding Dreams. Shattered.

Banana pudding, reviewed on video by people with way too much time on their hands. "People," of course,  meaning me. 

If there were any place on earth I would rather live than sunny Los Angeles, it would the Kozy Shack. In this magical locale, the world's most delicious dessert treats are made: they're all-natural, always fresh and creamy, and available in at your friendly local grocery store. 

The Kozy Shack company is based in Hicksville, Long Island, New York - just a few miles from where I grew up - and I've been eating gorging myself on their products since I was a kid. The company's trio of rice puddings - original, cinnamon-raisin, and the richer, more vanilla-y European-style - are the supermarket category's equivalent to Haagen Dazs ice cream. They put the crap that Jell-O foists on the American public to shame (the General Foods subsidiary recently dropped an ad circular in my mailbox that described its product as "contemporary." Creepy.) 

Kozy Shack has been expanding lately. Seasonal flavors like pumpkin and peach have been added. My vegan friends love the company's soy-based products. On the other hand, I don't know what to make of the "probiotic" SimplyWell brand extension, which features flavors like Green Tea and Lemon Chai. 

I know this blog is supposed to be about bananas, but to my most-beloved dudes at Kozy: Probiotic? Why are you stooping to the level of yogurt? You're better than that, and you know it. I'm also suspicious of some of the other products recently released under the Kozy Shack label - a line of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, and frozen desserts like tiramisu cups and eclairs. Here's the problem: the rice pudding bar set by the original Kozy line reaches celestial heights. Unless those other products come close - very close - they're going to be disappointing to consumers, and will make the whole Shack a less appealing piece of culinary real estate. 

That applies even to other pudding varieties, which brings us to bananas. Kozy Shack's earlier foray into the minefield of banana pudding - I call it that because the treat is so good when it is good, and so awful when it isn't -  was a disastrous recreation of a New Orleans staple called Bananas Foster. The real thing features about forty pounds of butter per serving, along with a pirate schooner's worth of rum and sugar, mixed with bananas and banana liqueur, set on fire, and poured over vanilla ice cream. Trying to capture this in a hooch-and-fire free plastic supermarket cup was a singularly bad idea. 

_{This earlier Kozy Shack attempt at  banana pudding was a fail.}

This time around, the pudding experts from Strong Island have kept it simpler. Good idea. But the results are still less-than-perfect. The ingredients list serves as the first warning: there are "natural flavors," but bananas themselves are never mentioned. The product is all-natural, which is good, but the taste just isn't right.  See the attached video report, which includes my girlfriend's off-camera opinion. She is a pudding expert and you can absolutely trust her.

Bummer. I was rooting for this one. But still, the company is doing incredible things with two of the world's other staple foods: the sublime rice varieties, and the equally splendid tapioca (aka manioc, aka casava, aka yuca, and more than a dozen other names worldwide) rocks, as well. So all is forgiven - and I encourage a third try. Hint: real bananas, possibly in chunks (tough to do, I know, given the fruit's perishability.) And it needs to be much, much creamier. The current version is way too gel-like.

Oh, and there's definitely one Kozy marketing move that I absolutely buy into: the company's sponsorship of the most lovable, awesome baseball team in human history.

UPDATE: A couple of readers have written in with their own Kozy Shack banana variants - which involve taking either the tapioca or one of the existing rice varieties, slicing bananas into it, and mixing it up with Nilla wafers (or this organic alternative.) Excellent idea. 

Nobel Prize-winner Paul Krugman recommends "Banana"

Here's what Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently told Barrons - the weekly financial publication from the Wall Street Journal - in an interview about his views on global economics. 

Barrons: What great books have you read recently that you can recommend?

Krugman: I just reread a good part of John Maynard Keynes's Essays in Persuasion, especially "The Great Slump of 1930," which is awesomely relevant right now. And while it has nothing much to do with the crisis, I'd highly recommend Dan Koeppel's Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, which tells you a lot about the history of globalization along the way.

The paperback version of Banana was released this past January; the hardcover came out a year earlier. The book is about the crisis facing the world's most popular and important fruit - a crisis preceded by thousands of years of history and legend, and precipitated by a century of globalization and ignoring the lessons of the past. Banana - like this blog - weaves together a story that covers science, economics, history, pop culture, religion, and myth, explaining why this fruit, which millions love, and which millions more depend on to survive, is in danger of disappearing. 

There are reviews of the book in the column to the left, purchasing links to the right, and tons of blog entries below. You can learn even more about the book and the blog here. 

Dentist. Needle. Yikes. Yummy?

I'm writing this, literally, from the chair at the dentist's office, where I just received six shots of novacaine as prep for treatment of an abscess. So?

Well, to make the needle feel less piquant, the usual procedure is to swab the gums with a numbing gel. As soon as the cotton swab got close, I detected the aroma of banana (ok, fake banana.) The taste was roughly akin to the same flavor of Laffy Taffy, which is to say absolutely FUNSGUSTING!

It turns out that the product comes in tons of flavors. My doc also has cherry and choco-mint.

The hygienist was kind enough to angle the exam light while I snapped this pic.

Here comes the boss. He's totally baffled. As the procedure begins, he asks me if I believe in God.

No kidding.

Update: Made it home alive. Apparently, the dental world is lousy with flavored anesthetic gels. Dozens of brands, dozens of palate-pleasing varieties. I'm almost tempted to throw a party...the featured product of which would have to be the pina-colada flavored salve offered as part of the Harry J. Bosworth Company's somehow-appropriately named "ComfortCaine" line of goods (the company also notes that the item is excellent as a gag-reflex suppressant. This is getting worse by the minute, so I'll just stop.) 

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Banana Price Watch: 7-Eleven, Los Angeles

Interesting strategy at my favorite local convenience store, on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Rosemont In the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles (just steps from Dodger Stadium.)

Instead of the typical branded, presented-in-a-box fruit Chiquita is selling in many U.S. convenience stores, the fruit here is bought at local supermarkets and sold in an ordinary basket. At the current price - 69 cents per banana - the store manager told me customers purchased a respectable fifty or so a day. Still, he thought he could do better, and was about to add a twofer, with a pair of bananas going for a buck. 

The DIY approach nets the local shop a considerable profit over Chiquita's all-in-one strategy, which involves a national distribution network of refrigerated product, each fruit with a sticker on it, to of about 13,000 convenience stores. Chiquita's suggested retail price for its product is 75 to 99 cents. The benefit, it says, is that that the controlled supplyand special packaging allows the fruit to arrive at the stores perfectly ripe - eliminating the need for store managers to spend time waiting for the green bananas typically found on supermarket shelves to ripen. The downside is profit margins: Chiquita charges C-stores about forty cents per fruit. My 7-Eleven manager can buy bananas at the Trader Joe's down the street for half that. 

Analysis: though it is certainly more profitable for convenience stores to adopt the DIY approach, most local mini-marts probably won't do so - meaning that the Chiquita method will likely be more successful. Whatever else the company does wrong or right, this is a visionary and important (though as-yet unproven) strategy, because it demonstrates the banana's changing - and critical - role in the American diet: as the best, most affordable stand-in for the mountains of junk food that have created a massive juvenile health crisis.

Mobile Blogging from here.

(And about that link in that first paragraph - I'm from Brooklyn.) 

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Make Your Own Chandelier Out of Chiquita Boxes

This is just about the coolest thing ever. Dutch designer Anneke Jacobs first made this light fixture out of banana boxes in 2003 - but now, she's released DIY instructions. I'm going to get to work on mine right away (you can buy one, too, if the project seems too daunting.)

Download the plans here (PDF file.)

via InventorSpot; thanks, Dimitri!

Latest Banana Growing Nation: Iceland

Greenhouse bananas in Iceland; photo reproduced under Wikimedia Commons license. Original here.

Bananas normally need to grow under tropical conditions: even in the U.S., a commercial crop isn't viable, because California and Florida aren't quite hot enough for large-scale production. One might think that Iceland - where the mean daily temperature over a year is about seven degrees Celsius (44 Fahrenheit) - would hardly qualify. But the North Atlantic island nation has a banana trump-card: huge stores of geothermal energy beneath its volcanic landscape. That means greenhouses, and - in an effort to become the world's first full-carbon neutral nation - the Icelandic government has decided that it is going to try to stop importing bananas from Latin America, and grow its entire supply indoors.

So far, the effort is mostly symbolic, despite some (false) reports that the country is now exporting the fruit. In 2005, the last year for which statistics are available, Iceland imported 4.7 million tones of bananas (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization; link will download PDF file.) With only 1,000 square meters currently devoted to at-home production, boatload after boatload would still be needed to satisfy the nation's exceptionally hunger for the fruit. Iceland is the Western hemisphere's number one per capita banana consuming nation: the average Icelander eats 30 pounds of the fruit per year (in the developed world, only New Zealanders like bananas better, with each Kiwi eating 44 pounds per annum. The U.S. falls into fourth place, at 27 pounds, just edged out by Slovenia, which has a one pound - or four banana - advantage.)

Still, the effort is a noble one - though I find it a little odd that Iceland's internal production appears to be limited to Cavendish, the standard supermarket fruit (that's what the variety pictured above appears to be, as well as the ones in the image linked here, though I could be wrong, and welcome corrections.) With so many other amazing and more delicious kinds of banana - and with hothouse production eliminating the usual problems with those varieties (presence of disease; distance shipping; fragility; variable weather conditions) - it would seem that Iceland's small crop could also be a gourmet crop. Isn't that what the world's hungriest banana consumers (almost) deserve?

Banana Nut Cheerios: Review and Rant

You can barely see the bananas on the package, and the product itself could do with a bit more banana flavor, too.

You will think I'm a lousy sourpuss for saying this, but there are WAY too many kinds of Cheerios. But that's because you probably don't know how many kinds: Eleven. That's right. With the addition of the new banana-nut flavor, you now need your toes to count the number of varieties of America's favorite breakfast food that are currently available on store shelves.

I don't care how much you love Cheerios. Eleven kinds? That's insane! (There are two Yogurt Burst flavors; only one is shown.)

The other thing that's totally sucky about Cheerios is the brand's constant harping on the "fact" that eating it "may" reduce the risk of heart disease. SHENANIGANS and BOGOSITY! Not eating a lot of bacon may reduce the risk of heart disease, and Cheerios may a breakfast delight, but can't cereal just be advertised as something that tastes good, even if two of the Cheerios varieties are shameless imitations Kellogg's Froot Loops and Apple Jacks - a couple of the best-tasting bowl-and-milk horrors ever created? (See links below for the actual health claims, and why they're the bunk.)

Aa far as eating the new variety goes, I'd say the banana taste could be more pronounced, and I'm not sure the overall concept of putting banana in the cereal itself (rather than into the bowl with cereal, as has been done since Chiquita came up with the idea, nearly a century ago - the story of the development of bananas+cereal as a recipe is in my book) is a step in a good direction. Still, I rank the product pretty high on the breakfast taste scale. Bonus points for doing it without artificial flavors. If you like Cheerios, they're worth trying.

General Mills has a special Banana Nut Cheerios website, with a movie, nutritional info, recipes, and a 55-cents off coupon. There are also some "banana fun facts," some of which are - if not wrong - then poorly worded (like this one: "There is no such thing as a banana tree. Bananas grow on plants." I think what they mean to say is that bananas are an herb, or that bananas grow on what are basically stems.)

More about Banana Nut Cheerios (including coupon) here.

Crazy, hyped, manipulative nutritional claims about the cereal brand here. Info on why those claims are completely bogus here.

.

Bonus breakfast suggestion - thinking about Cheerios for your kids? Consider that the vampiric occult treat, also from General Mills, contains THE SAME AMOUNT OF ADDED SUGAR - twelve grams per 27 gram serving - than at least two Cheerios varieties - Apple Cinnamon and Frosted (Banana Nut comes close, with nine grams.) And much of Count Chocula's sugar is delivered in the optimal form of marshmallows. Manufacturer's nutritional claims for Count Chocula: none. Suggested nutritional claim: feed this to your kids and they will grow up to be INTERESTING. More on the demonic dark lord of daybreak delight here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Exclusive: Developer of Disease-Resistant, Supermarket Banana Explains How it Works

Australian banana researcher James Dale. Image: QUT

The race to save our supermarket banana from disease is on, and a scientist in Australia - aided by a grant from the Gates Foundation - says that he and his team have developed a genetically modified version of the fruit (the term they use is "biofortification") that successfully resists the blight that has destroyed much of the banana industry in his country, and that threatens the world's entire banana crop. I interviewed James Dale for my book. Back then, he talked about how difficult banana breeding is. That remains the case - but this development is a major breakthrough, though he estimates that it will be as long as decade before the fruit he's working with truly proves its worth.

I first wrote about the breakthrough last year. Here's a more extensive interview with Dale that I conducted in January. In it, he gives details on the project - and where it might be going.

DK: Panama Disease is highly transmittable – I wonder about how you’re able to actually test these resistant plants that you’ve developed, especially in a country that’s already got a huge problem with the disease. Aren’t you and the Australian banana industry concerned that – since you have to expose these plants to PD – you might inadvertently let something escape?

JAMES: Needless to say, there would be concern about doing those challenges even in the glasshouse. So yes, the bio-security people are very, very concerned about this. Our tests are either going to be conducted where the disease already exists – in the Northern Territory – but also in Southeast Asia. Right now, we’re negotiating where to conduct those trials.

DK: So right now, you’ve only tested against Tropical Race 4 in the greenhouse?

JAMES: No, we haven’t tested against Race 4 in the greenhouse – we’ve so far only tested against Race 1 in the greenhouse.

Note: Panama Disease has different variations. Tropical Race 1 is the “original” version that killed the first commercial banana, the Gros Michel. The Cavendish – our banana – replaced that fruit in the 1950s and 1960s because it was immune to Race 1. Tropical Race 4 appeared in the 1990s, shocking the banana world because it affected the Cavendish, and beginning the race to find a remedy for the blight. The technical name for these disease is "Fusarium Wilt."

DK: Would resistance to Race 4 necessarily be carried over?

JAMES: We believe so – the hypothesis is that there’s no reason to think that the genes we’re working with in Cavendish won’t provide resistance to Race 4.

DK: Cavendish is already resistant to Race 1 - that's why it was adopted - so how is that a legitmate test?

JAMES: We have generated transgenic Lady finger expressing the resistance genes. Lady finger is susceptible to both Race 1 and tropical Race 4. We have challenged these transgenic lines in the glasshouse with Race 1 and have identified a number of highly resistant lines. The resistance strategy is not targeted to Race 1 but is targeted to inhibiting a basic infection process of Fusarium. Therefore, we believe there is a reasonable chance that the genes that provide resistance to Race 1 in Lady finger will also provide resistance to Race 4 in Cavendish. But we still need to do the challenges.

Banana Price Watch - New Record!

We all know things are expensive in Alaska. How expensive? You can't see the price tag, but my girlfriend - who is visiting there this week - reports that these rather weak (they've traveled far) looking bunches at a supermarket in Dutch Harbor (the Aleutian island home of "The Deadliest Catch" television program) went for a whopping $2.49 a pound. That's more than triple what we're paying these days in Los Angeles. Unhealthy snacks are even more costly: check out the Doritos.

  

Number One Most Emailed Story of the Year

My banana piece in "The Scientist."

Normally, you have to be a paid subscriber to read it. Free access here, at least for a while.

Conglolese Rebel Leader and the Deadliest Banana Disease (Updated)

I just got back from a trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I was on assignment for National Geographic. More on that in the coming weeks. We were in the central part of the country. Eastern Congo - along the borders of Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda - has been locked in fighting for years now, and the battles have ratcheted up since last August, resulting in a huge humanitarian crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people being forced into refugee camps, along with thousands of deaths.

The region is where people depend on bananas as part of their diet more than anywhere else in the world, and the fruit there is being attacked by what is probably the most virulent banana disease: a fungus bacterium called Xanthomonas wilt. Its spread can be slowed through clean-farming techniques - making sure tools and clothing are kept free of dirt as they move from village to village - and there have been extensive informational campaigns designed to carry this information to local families, who would face starvation if the disease hit their crops.

The image above is of Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Congolese rebels. It appeared last year in the pages of a magazine called Jeune Afrique (Young Africa). He's vowing that he will take his forces all the way to Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. His fortunes have since changed, but the disease hasn't - and the poster behind him, which advertises how to stop it, will probably outlast his reign.

Update: Nkunda's reign is over. He was arrested yesterday in Rwanda, his former state sponsor. The Guardian has a good piece on it.

Chiquita's Pricey Belgian Airport Fruit - The Banana's Future as a Snack Food?

That's two bucks a pop. And they're selling.

An interesting Chiquita experiment at Belgium's Brussels National airport - appropriate, since the transportation hub is just a fifteen-minute, one-stop train ride from the global banana bank at the Catholic University of Leuven, where over 1,400 varieties of the fruit are preserved for scientific experimentation and against future ecosystem loss (if only the banana companies would contribute a bit to the funding of the bank!)

At the top is the "Chiquita Banana on the Go" product. This is a somewhat different take on the single-sale banana than the not-quite-successful convenience store version (below.) Note the bar code and the per-fruit branding - the fruit we see at our U.S. 7Eleven stores is sometimes sold in banana-logo cartons, but aren't individually labeled. Also interesting: the Belgian airport bananas sat right next to bowls of apples and oranges, which weren't branded. After more than a century, the banana is pretty much the only fruit that takes to this kind of labeling.

Note the bar codes: perfect for the banana as a "packaged good," rather than a plain-old item of produce. Packaged goods, of course, cost more.

Analysis: does the branding make a difference in this retail venue? The fascinating thing here is that Chiquita is using its brand-name for the opposite purpose in the airport than it does in supermarkets. Sold at grocery stores, the banana is a commodity - cheaper than apples and oranges. The logo serves as a gentle incentive toward consumer choice: "pick me," it says, "over other bananas," even though they're all the same. But in the airport, Chiquita is positioning its fruit as a luxury good - something with more value than the plainly-presented competition. Does it work? The worker at the café told me that the bananas still sold at twice the rate of the apples and oranges, despite - in this case - also costing twice as much (and that's a lot: €1.50 is about two bucks these days - enough to buy four pounds, or up to 12 bananas, in some parts of the U.S.!)

Final point: This reflects the changing role of the fruit in our culture. Less and less is it competing with other produce - and more and more with snacks like candy and chips. That's a good thing in terms of public health - and probably for the banana companies, too, which, if the transformation continues, will ultimately be able to charge a lot more for fruit sold by the piece, rather than by the pound. Still, at this point, it seems the Euros are more willing to swallow the banana as a snack-food substitute than we in the U.S...

Mega-bargain Bananas - at a Gas Station?

Saw these in late December off Interstate 93 at a Circle K in Plymouth, New Hampshire. What a deal! But does that mean banana prices overall are dropping? Nope - they're still all over the map. Here in Los Angeles, my local market is selling them for the oddball price of 77 cents a pound.

Mobile Blogging from here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Stocking Stuffers, 2008

When you're the 'banana guy', you're blessed with special cheer: Gifts like these.

Item one is a massive bar of soap - about the size of a mango - with this lovely banana branding. On opening, it turns out to be a Portuguese-made beauty bar marked "confianca", or "confidence".

No banana scent, but the word "banana" was brought to us in the15th century by Portuguese traders, who found the fruit being grown at a town near the mouth of the Congo river by the same name.

Second on the list: this silicon "banana handle," designed as a compact potholder. Slip the peel onto the handle of a hot skillet, and you won't get burned. I tried it last night on a pot of spaghetti sauce, and it worked!

Thanks to the Thompson family for the loot.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Convenience Store Banana Report: Fail!

Spending the week in the great north country of New Hampshire and saw this sign adorning the entrance to a convenience store. No bananas of any kind inside, though. "We sold 'em for 79 cents each, and you could buy a whole pound for that at the IGA down the street," the clerk told me. It had been months since a Chiquita delivery.

The competition from the Dunkin' Donuts - same price at the same location - couldn't have helped much.

Mobile Blogging from Colebrook, New Hampshire, U.S.A.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Photo of the Week

Finally back from Africa. Amazing bananas, amazing stories and photos. Exhausted. No blog entries, of course - but you'll see tons over the next few weeks. In the meantime, thanks to my buddy Rich Snodsmith - also a shirt of the month contributor - here's Trader Joe's holding banana prices down. Bravo - especially considering that wholesale banana prices have more than doubled in that five-year period! Can anyone say "loss leader?"

But wait - is that nineteen-cent banana really a bargain? Most other stores sell fruit by the pound. Generally, a supermarket fruit weighs a bit more than six ounces - you get about two and a half bananas per pound (sure, sometimes they're smaller, but I'm assuming bigger because at TJ's, you get to choose.) What about banana prices? These days, you're lucky to pay 59 cents for a pound of the fruit in most cities. Sixty-nine cents seems to be the average, and a dime more isn't unheard of.

Here's the math:

• At 59 cents for a pound, a single banana costs about 24 cents.
• Add ten cents to the bulk price, and you pay a bit less than 28 cents per fruit.
• Another dime at the scale, and a single banana sets you back almost 32 cents.

What about organics? They usually run about 99 cents a pound - yielding a whopping forty cents per banana.

The Trader Joe banana turns out to be the real deal - coming in at less than 50 cents per pound. They're probably the cheapest bananas in America.

Thanks, Rich!

Exclusive: Dole, Dow, Sued for Ecuador Poisonings

This report copyright 2008 www.bananabook.org.

Two of the world's biggest banana companies, the American chemical companies who supply them, along with several other companies they do business with, are being sued by pilots, ground crew, and residents of the Ecuadorian plantation town of Puerto Viejo for health damage they allegedly suffered during years of spraying of Mancozeb, a fungicide used to combat Black Sigatoka, the most common and costly disease affecting commercial bananas.

The suit was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia (Washington, D.C.) on September 18, 2008. It names Dole, Monsanto, Dupont, Dow Chemical and Noboa - which markets bananas in the U.S. under the "Bonita" brand name - as primary defendants, and accuses them of using the chemical despite knowing that it would cause birth defects, cancer, and respiratory and fertility problems among banana workers and their families.

Mancozeb is listed by the Pesticde Action Network as having "toxicity to humans, including carcinogenicity, reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, and acute toxicity." Mancozeb is a fairly common garden fungicide, and the U.S. EPA regards it as safe, but only in small quantities and with proper protective gear and usage. The suit alleges all were lacking.

The suit is one of several that banana companies are facing and have faced in U.S. courts for their actions overseas. Last year, Dole received a mixed verdict in a similar pesticide suit involving Nicaraguan workers, with some receiving damages, and some charges being dismissed. Chiquita is currently being sued by families who allege that payments the company made to Colombian terrorist groups directly funded activities that led to the deaths of their loved ones.

I'll follow up on the suit - I'll contact the banana companies for comment, but right now, I'm on my way to do some banana work in Africa, with limited access - I'm literally writing this in the airport, so this is just a short news burst. In the meantime, here are links to documents related to the suit:

Here's a link to the actual court filing. (PDF file will download.)

Here are three clippings from the Ecuadorian media about the suit: link, link, link. (PDF files will open.)

This Thanksgiving, One Condiment to Rule Them All

Got this at a Philippine grocery a few blocks from my house in Los Angeles. Price: $1.59. The lady behind the counter called it "banana ketchup," and that's pretty much what it is, with the same basic ingredients - sugar, vinegar, salt, and spices - as the tomato stuff, but with bananas substituted for the red fruit base.

There are a bunch of varieties from Jufran. The product is listed at Ketchupworld.com, with both regular and hot versions; neither of these seem to be the one I found - the ingredients listed for both are different. The ketchup site gets $3.50 for a mail-ordered bottle. Searching around, it seems that the product has multiple incarnations, with different labeling - some designated as "sauce," others as "ketchup," and some using bright red food coloring to make them look more like the real thing. Mine is marked as "The Original," so I'll go with that.

How did ours taste? Fantastic: a little spicy, a little sweet - with the same consistency as tomato ketchup. I had mine on a big hunk of Turkey breast. Whupped the daylights out of cranberry sauce.

All hail the new King of Condiments.

Here's a link to a brief wikipedia entry on banana ketchup.

Obama's Pick For Attorney General Has Banana Problems

Eric Holder, Chiquita defender and Obama pick for U.S. Attorney General.

I've gotten dozens of emails in the 48 hours since Eric Holder emerged as President-elect Barack Obama's choice as U.S. Attorney General. To summarize: Holder is a former deputy U.S. attorney general in the Clinton administration who has been described as a "long-time Obama advisor." He was part of the committee that helped Obama choose Joe Biden as vice-presidential nominee. Holder would be the nation's first African-American attorney general. He's currently in private practice with the law firm of Covington & Burling, which is where the banana trouble begins.

Here's the key part of the Wikipedia page on Holder that explains it (I urge you to read the whole entry, which summarizes his entire career.)

"In 2004, Holder helped negotiate an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita Brands International in a case that involved Chiquita's payment of "protection money" to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations. In the agreement, Chiquita's officials pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $25 million. Holder represents Chiquita in the civil action that grew out of this criminal case."

The civil action mentioned in the article is a lawsuit on behalf of the families of seven missionaries who were murdered by Colombia's United Self Defense Forces (AUC). The suit alleges that since Chiquita was funding the AUC at the times the killings occurred, the banana company bears some responsibility for them.

I agree, and I've blogged about the issue numerous times. Here are links to some of the previous entries:

• In May, the CBS News program "60 Minutes" did a segment on the Colombia-Chiquita story. It included an interview with Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre. Read (and view the interview) here.  

• Here's the entry about the lawsuits that Holder and his law firm, Covington and Burling, are defending Chiquita against. 

• The families of U.S. victims of the AUC aren't the only ones suing Chiquita. Similar cases have been brought by 400 Colombian families. My November, 2007 entry on is here.

So what to do about this?

Silence isn't an option. Anyone who reads this blog knows where my political sympathies lie. I was, and remain, and Obama supporter. I know that the Washington merry-go-round - and especially when it comes to attorneys - makes for strange bedfellows. I don't know if I'd excuse the fact that Holder represented Chiquita in negotiating the terms of the fine it paid to the Justice Department. But I know that representing the company against the families of the AUC victims is inexcusable. As my colleague Jason Glaser - whose upcoming documentary, "The Affected," directly illustrates how dangerous the lives of banana workers in Latin America are, even when they don't have to deal with terrorism - notes, "isn't it about time we have a lawyer in [the U.S. attorney general's] position from a plaintiff's firm [italics mine], someone who may have at one time served the interests of a mammal as opposed to a corporate entity?"

The liberal/progressive community is going to do a lot of hand-wringing about this. It needs to do more. We elected Obama - and we need to keep him honest. To fail to do so would be to write him the same kind of blank check that supporters of the previous administration handed over to the officials they elected. Holder owes us an explanation, though I don't see how any words from him could be convincing - especially to those in Latin America whose trust we have already lost. Getting Chiquita to agree  to agree to full disclosure and restitution would be an appropriate way for Holder to spend his remaining weeks in the private sector - and a good start.

So here's what to do.

First, learn about Holder - not just about his actions regarding Chiquita, but his entire career. Decide for yourself whether he deserves a pass. Then, use the network - the one we used so successfully to get Obama elected. Blog, Twitter, and email the links about Holder that you think are most important, good or bad (my Twitter handle is "soulbarn", if you want to follow my posts.) The point is to make sure the information gets out there. The most important thing we can do right now is establish, early, that transparency is one of the things we voted for on November 4th.  Our ability to spread this information quickly, and spark a public debate about it - rather than use this information simply in a destructive way - is key.  

Here are some good places to find out more about Holder, and to discuss the nomination. I invite you to add more links in the comment thread.

• Dan Kovalik, in the Huffington Post (11/18/08), not mincing words. Headline: "Lawyer for Chiquita in Colombia Death Squad Case May be Next U.S. Attorney General." 

• Discussion thread at Democratic Underground forums. 

• Slate's "Bananas of Mass Destruction" (2007), including Chiquita's court filings. 

• "The Trouble With Eric Holder," from The Nation, 11/18/08. Not just bananas - Holder, according to the story, also has some Patriot Act issues. 

• "Preliminary Facts and Thoughts About Eric Holder," from Salon, 11/18/08. A still-being-updated, roundup on Holder's dealings, positive and negative. 

Do you enjoy reading the Banana Blog? Consider making a donation to help keep the flow of banana news coming. Or buy my book.

Photo of the Week

Kooky fruitmobile, from Funstasticus.

This is the craziest fruit truck ever. Where was the image shot? Hard to say. Judging from the apparent ethnicity of the driver and the guy watching, it could be Latin America, or it could be the Philippines, or somewhere else. The other items on the truck - pineapples, squash, sweet potato - could be grown in either place. Check the banana trees growing behind the house to the left. The image is from the Funtasticus website.

Follow-up: After examining the photo, my Dad notes that "just above the right tire are some daikon, and about a foot above the scale is a Durian(?). If these IDs are correct, it is Asia/ Philippines. Although daikon can be grown anywhere, I am not aware of Durian growing anywhere besides Asia, Philippines, Indonesia."

Good one, Dad!

Can't narrow the Asia part down, but if we arbitrarily make it a choice between Indonesia and the Philippines, then the Philippines gets the nod. Why? In the Philippines, traffic keeps right - and the driver sits on the left, according to Wikipedia. In Indonesia, roadside custom is the opposite. To the extent that this overburdened little truck is being "driven" - the driver seems to be stepping out of his compartment, and it may very well be to push - it seems to be happening from the left side.

Online Course in Banana Quarantine Techniques

Philippine Lacatan banana tree at market - from the extensive and fascinating Market Manilla website. The Lacatan is the Philippine's "comfort food" banana, and one of the world's most delicious.

One of the most frustrating elements of fighting banana disease (or any disease) is that quarantine actually works - but only in theory. For over a century, attempts to isolate infected bananas from healthy ones have been attempted, and failed. These efforts have, in fact, generally made things worse, because they've often been accompanied by denial on the part of banana producers that the problem needs to be attacked on other levels, as well (or denial that quarantine is mostly ineffective.)

But clean farming can make a difference: it can boost crop yields, and slow the spread of disease - crucially important to subsistence farmers, for whom even cutting a percentage of loss can be lifesaving. And there have been considerable successes in some recent quarantine programs. Pakistani officials are now offering a pilot program in managing banana diseases that's different from traditional efforts, which have usually involved in the field training. This one is all-electronic. In my book, I describe how ambitious field programs in Pakistan failed in the early part of this decade. I don't know whether on-site instruction works better than these self-paced versions - but the Philippines is both a banana paradise (with huge plantations and breeding variety) and a center of banana disease, so the effort is absolutely necessary.

Here's how the course introduces itself to first-time participants:

"Have you experienced tremendous yield loss in your banana due to diseases? Have you tried several methods to combat these, yet all proved ineffective? Well, worry no more for you just found the right niche that’ll shun away your farming woes. Congratulations! You are about to start the journey towards achieving a high quality, disease-free banana. Welcome to the online course on Managing Common Diseases in Banana!"

I guess every school needs cheerleaders. Here's a direct link (registration required) to the nine-part program, which is called "Managing Common Disease in Banana."

Bananas Turn Blue When Ripening

Image copyright Wiley-VCH 2008

Only Under UV light - from a degradation in chlorophyll, according to a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie. Cool picture; read more at physorg.com.

Banana Industry Founder's Home: Yours for $3.6 Million

Photo from Prudential Cape Shores Real Estate. Link Below.

Lorenzo Dow Baker - founder of the American banana industry. Now you can live in his house. Photo: Library of Congress.

This home - which sits on ten acres within the Cape Cod National Seashore, in Massachusetts, was the birthplace of Lorenzo Dow Baker, the sea captain whose first load of bananas to the United States - sold in 1870 - launched the Boston Fruit Company, later United Fruit, now known as Chiquita. After he became a banana mogul, Baker's primary residence was at a mansion in the banana-rush town of Port Antonio, Jamaica - where he was said to light his cigars with five dollar bills - but that dwelling has long since burned to the ground. This seaside parcel was put on the market by its current owners, the Biddle family - a highbrow clan known for their literary salons, according a Boston Globe story - in mid-October. The property is also the former home of American writer John Dos Passos, who - ironically - was a critic of the company Baker founded.

Here's (first entry on the page) the real estate listing, with more pictures, if you're thinking of bidding.

Update: This entry was posted in October, 2008. As of March, 2009, the home was still for sale, and the price hasn't changed.

Banana Companies Rat Each Other Out

The biggest news item I avoid in this blog are banana trade wars. That's because it would take me thousands and thousands of words to explain why the U.S., Europe, and the big banana companies have been fighting for years over who gets to sell bananas where. There have been resolutions that have led to no resolutions, problems that have led to more problems, and lots of ugly behavior on both sides. Suffice it to say that the whole thing is corrupt, and that none of it really affects whether or not bananas show up on store shelves (though it does affect where those bananas come from, and prices, as you'll see, below.) The problem is that when you enter the labyrinth, you just can't find your way back. Sorry.

But sometimes, I just have to say something. Last week, Dole and Del Monte - Dole's the second biggest banana company in the world, and Del Monte, depending on how you count, is probably third or fourth - were fined a total of $83 million by the European Union for conspiring to fix banana prices in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. These fines were good. Price-fixing is bad, and I'm always happy - we should all be happy - when banana company skullduggery is exposed.

The interesting thing about all this is who turned the Dole and Del Monte in: it was Chiquita, their rival, and the world's biggest banana company.

This time, I won't comment, other than to refer you to the source of the picture, above.

I Declare War on the Banana Diet!

Homemade banana ice cream sammiches, Image from chubbyhubby.net

We don't have to sit by while the "Morning Banana Diet" marches across the planet, raising prices for the fruit and making emaciated zombies of us all. Here's a brand new recipe - from the Chubby Hubby Blog - for homemade banana ice cream, served between brownie cookies - that I hope will be the beginning of a massive counter-strike against the craze that begin a few months ago in Japan.

Banana tip: freeze them when they go brown. They keep for months, and you can use them to make all kinds of delicious stuff. Next in the arsenal: this banana pudding recipe - made with vanilla wafers - from the chitterlings.com soul food site (the recipe is almost at the bottom of the page.) We're going to make some this week. Report, with pictures, to come.

Thanks to my Dad for suggesting the recipe.

Insane Banana Diets Can Also Raise Prices - Which Proves Something

Lots of folks emailed me news items on this. Japan has gone nuts for the "Morning Banana Diet," which promises to help you lose weight with this formula: you start in the morning with a breakfast of bananas and room-temperature water, then eat whatever you want - other than desert - the rest of the day. You can't eat later than six in the evening. you don't need to exercise, and people are going nuts. A half-dozen books on the diet have become best sellers, and the price of the fruit has shot up to over $3.00 per pound (more than quadruple what we pay in the U.S., and well over triple the average price in a Tokyo supermarket.)

The backstory? An opera singer told a talk show she'd lost over 30 pounds on the banana diet. The craze began from there.

Happy dieter, from a Reuters pic that accompanied a Time magazine story on the diet.

A spokesperson for Dole - the nation's largest banana importer (second largest in the world) - told Great Britain's Daily Mail that this was "the first time bananas have been so scarce. Right now, we are finding ourselves unable to meet demand."

There was an earlier banana diet craze, in 1995, that began with the U.S. release of a book called "The Amazingly Simple Banana Diet," by Clifford Thurlow (who also wrote a biography of Salvador Dali.) I couldn't find any details on the actual program, sadly, or whether Japan's morning banana regime was similar to it.

Does the diet work? Sure. If you eat fewer calories than you take in, then you'll lose weight. If you skip your normal breakfast, and substitute a banana; and cut out alcohol and desserts - both of which might reasonably be assumed to be part of the diet of a person who might want to drop a few kilos, you'll accomplish that goal. The books claim that the diet achieves weight loss through a lot of metabolic bunkum, which would be nice. In the 1920s, American banana companies hired armies of doctors to promote all kinds of health claims about the fruit, but even then, they pretty much stuck to the truth.

And even at three bucks a pound, you'll still save money, after you weigh the price of what you've foregone, versus the single banana you've slotted in per day.

To get a little serious: as I've said in the past, the price of bananas is key to the fruit's success - they are the cheap fruit. Things like disease and weather threaten to raise costs to point at which the fruit returns to its "genuine" state - an expensive, tropical rarity. I've advocated, as a solution to any future banana crisis, that importers look into providing a portfolio of banana varieties - as those same companies do with apples and citrus - that would diversify the crop and offer the fruit along a spectrum of tastes and prices. In its own ridiculous way, the Japan craze has proven that consumers will pay more for bananas if they that the fruit offers something more than just a partnership with corn flakes.

Shirt of the Month

Shirt donated by the great Rich Snodsmith. Model: Gia de los Muertos.

Ugandan Comfort Food Championships Underway. Your Local Market Next?

Matooke flour, courtesy Ugandan Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development Programme

Steaming banana leaves for matooke. Full video sequence here.

There's a knock-down, drag-out contest going on right now in Kampala - held as a precursor to next month's World Banana Congress in Kenya - to see which chef makes the best Matooke, a Ugandan banana dish which I describe in my book as "the macaroni and cheese of the African highlands."

The contest began with over 100 chefs offering their recipes made with tooke, a flour made from East African Highland Plantains. Nine are now left standing, and they'll face off on October 5, serving their creations at a Presidential banquet to be held at the Kampala Serena Hotel.

Here's a description of the dish, which I refer to in my book, and which is more commonly referred to, as matooke. Interesting side note - I've mentioned it several times here, but Uganda is so dependent on bananas - many people get up to 90% of their daily calories from the fruit, eating up to 900 pounds of it a year, compared to about 25 pounds of it here in the United States - that in some small villages, the word for food, banana, and this signature dish are actually all the same. The description is from the Uganda Tourism website.

"One popular local dish is matooke (bananas of the plantain type) which are cooked boiled in a sauce of peanuts, fresh fish, meat or entrails. Matooke really goes with any relish, except that the best and most respectable way the Baganda cook it is to tie up the peeled fingers into a bundle of banana leaves which is then put in a cooking pan with just enough water to steam the leaves. When properly ready and tender, the bundle is removed and squeezed to get a smooth soft and golden yellow mash, served hot with all the banana leaves around to keep it hot. In Buganda, the food production process revolves around the banana tree. Tender banana tree shoots are removed from the plant and singed over fire to make a fine foil into which chunks of pork or beef are tied up and steamed on top of a bundle of bananas. This style of cooking preserves all the flavours and cooks up food like a pressure cooker, if not better. Dry banana leaves are used like bandages when bundles of matooke are being wrapped up for steaming. Strips and chunks cut from the banana tree stem can be used as a foundation at the bottom of the cooking pan so as to avoid the boiling water touching the bundle of the matooke being steamed.

I wish I was in Kenya to taste the gourmet versions, which are probably not entrail-laden. The dish, which can also be prepared with banana flour, may be coming to stores near you, according to a report published by the New Vision Ugandan news service. "We believe there is a huge market locally and globally for value added matooke products,” said. Dr. Florence Isabirye, director of the Ugandan Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development Programme (PIBID.)

Here's a recipe for matooke. You can use green plantains. It won't be the same, but you'll get the idea.

Schoolkids Jailed for Dressing as Banana and Monkey

How absolutely messed up is this? The principal of this school is an ignorant jackass. So is anybody else who signed on to this. Local police? Do you have fun jailing kids in costumes? Halloween's going to be a blast!

Here's what happened.

One kid put on a banana suit. The other kid put on a gorilla suit.

They ran across a football field during their school's homecoming game.

School officials had them arrested for TRESPASSING.

The kids the night in jail.

They have now been suspended for two weeks.

For my overseas readers, suspension from high school can be a serious issue - it can keep you from getting into a good college, no matter what the cause. That's because some college administrators apply rules as draconian as some high school administrators.

This happened at Flower Mound High School, near Fort Worth, Texas.

Proving that you don't mess with Texas, that football is more important than fun or creativity AND especially more than reasonable, rational thought.

Or justice.

Here's a story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Here's a Facebook support group for the kids, who are named Curtis Patton (age 17) and Sean Kight (18).

By the way, this isn't the first time in a year when students got punished for wearing silly costumes.

About the Book and the Blog

"Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World" explores the 7,000 year history of the world's most popular fruit. Here in the U.S., we eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. Around the world, millions of people rely on the fruit as their primary source of nutrition. The banana we eat, called the Cavendish, is threatened by an advancing, incurable disease. My book explains why the banana, ubiquitous as it is, is such a fragile fruit - and how science is struggling to save it. The biggest surprise of all is that the banana we enjoy today is not the one your grandparents grew up on. That banana was also wiped out by disease. "BANANA" explains why history may be repeating itself - and what needs to be done to prevent that.

On this blog, you'll find an eclectic mix of banana news, banana ideas, banana silliness, banana recipes, and almost every other kind of banana information. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it will make you interested enough that you'll want to check out my book. Thanks for visiting.

- Dan Koeppel

Superstar Librarian's Custom "Read" Poster

From Steve Campion's flickr photostream, here.

I met Steve Campion at the American Library Association's annual convention in Anaheim, California last spring. He made (and is the true star of) this awesome poster, which is a variant on the "Read" campaign that's been encouraging kids to improve their literacy. Steve also reviewed Banana on his MostlyNF blog, which is a great resource for finding other interesting non-fiction books (Steve averages nearly 100 a year!)