They’re yellow, sweet, seedless, always about the same shape and size. We love them in our breakfast cereals, our yogurts, our breads, and just on their own as an easy on-the-go snack. They’re nutritious, filled with good potassium. But are bananas environmentally friendly? Who grows them, and how? Why is it that they’re always about the same size? What are they anyway?
Bananas are Herbs
The banana plant is the world’s largest herb. Think parsley, basil, oregano… banana! The main stem of a banana plant (technically a “pseudostem” because it’s not a tree) can grow up to 25 feet tall.1 After about 9-12 months, the plant can produce fruit all year long under the right weather and geographic conditions.2
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Bananas are Berries
That thing that we call a fruit is, botanically speaking, a berry. So add bananas to your list of cranberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries! In botany, a berry has seeds and pulp and is produced from a single ovary. Can you think of other berries that we don’t commonly think of as such? How about watermelon, pumpkin, and tomatoes!!! But wait… bananas don’t have seeds. True, the one type of banana that we buy in the supermarket (the Cavendish) does not have seeds. However, worldwide, there are more than 1,000 types of bananas, many with tooth-shattering seeds.4
Bananas are Everywhere
Bananas are the world’s largest fruit crop and the fourth largest product grown overall, after wheat, rice, and corn. Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined. If you’re an average banana-eating 40-year-old American, you’re approaching banana number ten thousand.5 Native to South Asia, banana plants now grow in 120 countries, and are mainly grown in tropical environments. The world grows 86 million tons of them each year.6 This is surprising, especially when you consider that only a little over a century ago, bananas were virtually unknown in most parts of the world. According to the New York Times, “They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly — by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening.”7
The banana barons invented ingenious marketing campaigns. They placed bananas in schoolbooks, hired doctors to convince mothers that bananas were good for their kids, and wrote catchy jingles…
All together now:
“Hello amigo… I’m Chiquita Banana! And I’ve come to say, bananas have to ripen in a certain way…”8
“Bananas, in pajamas, are coming down the stairs…”9 – and of course –
“Ring, ring, ring, BANANAPHONE!”10
Bananas are usually eaten locally
Only about one fifth of bananas are internationally traded. Americans eat about a quarter of all exports, and the European Union consumes even more.11 Ecuador grows the most exported bananas—nearly a third of the world’s export. Ecuadorian income depends heavily on banana sales, which accounted for almost 10% of total exports in 2006.12 That means that if we all made a pledge to never again buy a single banana, most banana workers in Ecuador could be out of work.
Bananas are all Clones
Unless you’ve had the good fortune to chomp down on a banana in the tropics, it’s likely that all the bananas you have ever eaten were genetic twins. That’s because most supermarkets only sell one banana variety – the Cavendish. The Cavendish doesn’t reproduce by itself. To propagate, the Cavendish relies on humans to plant a cutting of another Cavendish.13 Selling clones has it advantages—they’re all the same size, and they all ripen at the same rate. Writer Dan Koeppel summed it up this way: “The Cavendish is the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger: efficient to produce, uniform in quality and universally affordable.”14
Bananas Now Less Tasty
Our great-grandparents did not eat the Cavendish, which was considered inferior in taste to the most popular banana at the time, the Gros Michel (a.k.a. Big Mike). But, in the early 1900s, the Gros Michel was invaded by a fungus called Panama disease. The Gros Michel vanished, and the Cavendish took its place.15
Bananas are Diseased
There is a new strain of Panama disease that’s attacking the Cavendish. According to Dan Koeppel writing for the New York Times:
The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.16
For us banana consumers, that means higher banana prices. The environment, however, might benefit from the banana crisis. Instead of buying bananas shipped from thousands of miles away, we’ll buy more apples trucked in from our local farmers. Instead of watching our tropical fruits rot in just a few days, we’ll store those apples in our cupboards for months.
Bananas are Radioactive … Just like Brazil nuts, potatoes, and nearly all other foods. Your body is radioactive, too. Compared to other foods, bananas contain higher levels of potassium, of which a portion is radioactive Potassium-40. Because of this, some scientists and journalists use bananas to put in perspective radiation due to nuclear power or medical procedures. During the Fukushima nuclear disaster, some explained radiation levels with a unit that I certainly never learned in any science class—the banana equivalent dose, otherwise known as BED.17
The BED has been criticized by many because it doesn’t bother to differentiate between different radioisotopes. It does not answer the question: is the isotope Potassium-40 or radioactive iodine? What is it’s half-life? The BED also does not consider how the radioactivity is absorbed by the body. Geoff Meggitt, who worked for the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, put it this way:
“The Potassium-40 in bananas is a particularly poor model isotope to use […] because the potassium content of our bodies seems to be under homeostatic control. When you eat a banana, your body’s level of Potassium-40 doesn’t increase. You just get rid of some excess Potassium-40. The net dose of a banana is zero.”18 Thus, when used as an indicator of the severity of an environmental disaster, bananas can be misleading.
Bananas are Ripened in Gas Chambers
To extend their shelf life, bananas are picked green and refrigerated until they reach the distributor, where they are ripened with ethylene gas. Ethylene gas is produced naturally by most fruits. If your fruit is wilting, yellowing, or smelling, it’s releasing ethylene gas. However, commercial ethylene gas is made from petroleum and natural gas feedstocks and is one of the highest volume chemicals produced globally. It’s used to make detergents, automotive antifreeze and plastics.
Atmospheric ethylene poses no risk to human health. Afterall, about three-quarters of atmospheric ethylene comes from natural sources. However, people that work with high levels of ethylene in confined areas may experience headaches, dizziness, even unconsciousness. When used improperly, ethylene gas has been known to explode factories because of its high flammability.19 More serious is the fact that “[m]etabolic studies in animals and humans have revealed that ethylene is metabolized to ethylene oxide, which is known to have carcinogenic and mutagenic effects.”20
Bananas Can be Grown Organically… Sometimes
Over 2% of exported bananas are now labeled organic.21 However, some say that buying organic bananas is a rip-off because bananas have a thick skin that provides a barrier for chemicals. Moreover, the thick skin does not change what conventional bananas are grown in—soil contaminated with chemicals. Furthermore, organic bananas are also ripened with ethylene gas.22 The other side of the argument is that you should in fact spring for organic bananas as conventional bananas are grown using one of the highest pesticide applications of any tropical crop.23
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Bananas are Too Cheap
Why do tropical bananas cost only half as much per pound as locally grown apples? Part of the reason is that international banana laborers are often exploited by multinational corporations (like Dole and Chiquita, which control more than half of all banana exports).25 Many are not given basic rights such as decent wages, health care, or the right to congregate. One of the most well-known examples of violence being used to keep banana labor cheap is the “Banana Massacre” that took place in Columbia in 1928. Colombian troops shot at least 47 and at most 2,000 United Fruit Company workers (numbers drastically vary depending on the source) in an effort to end a month-long union strike.26
Throughout the twentieth century, banana companies have made sure to protect their interest in their “banana republics”—countries that rely heavily on banana exports. In 1954, United Fruit helped overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala.27 Banana corporations often disregarded worker health. Dole continued to use the pesticide DBCP even after it was banned in the U.S. in 1979. As a result, tens of thousands of workers suffered mental and physical damage, including sterility.28
To reduce worker’s exposure to pesticides, support organic bananas. To make sure that workers are paid fairly, buy fair trade, and give preference to bananas from the Caribbean. According to the non-profit banana worker rights advocate group Banana Link:
Bananas in the Windward Islands are generally grown on small family farms that use more sustainable methods of production and fewer chemicals than conventional ‘dollar’ bananas grown on large-scale plantations. Over 3500 of the Windward Island banana farmers are registered as Fairtrade producers and there are plans for island production to soon be 100% Fairtrade.29
Now that you know a thing or eleven about bananas, do you think an environmentalist can eat bananas and still be an environmentalist? Do you still want to eat bananas? Why or why not?
