April 20, 2022 – Bananas

Happy National Banana Day! Did you know that bananas don’t grow on trees? They grow on tall sturdy plants that are often mistaken for trees. What looks like the trunk is actually overlapping leaves that are wrapped tightly around each other. A cluster of bananas is called a “hand”, while an individual banana is called a finger. Botanically speaking, bananas are technically classified as a berry. Mind. Blown.
There are over 400 varieties of bananas grown in 135 countries. The variety that we’re most familiar with, that we find in every grocery store, is the Cavendish banana. The Cavendish variety makes up 99% of exported bananas. But there’s some bad news – while they’re not at risk of outright extinction, they could become unviable for large-scale cultivation in the next 10 to 20 years. This is because, like most bananas, they lack genetic diversity, which puts them at risk for diseases.
Bananas were first encountered by European explorers in 1521 during the Magellan expedition in Guam and the Phillippines. They were first brought to the U.S. in 187 for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, where they were wrapped in foil and sold for ten cents a pop.
The biggest exporters of bananas are Ecuador, Philippines, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Guatemala, accounting for 60% of all bananas sold internationally. Worldwide, more than 100 billion bananas are eaten each year. Here in the U.S., Americans eat on average 27 pounds per person per year. But that’s nothing on Ecuadorians, who eat on average 218 pounds of bananas each year.
If you ever find yourself in Altadena, California, you can visit the International Banana Club Museum. It’s home to the largest collection of banana-related memorabilia – 17,000 banana related items that they have been collecting since 1972. Learn more here.