Bananas- An Uncertain Future

Bananas, the world's most popular fruit, are very, very vulnerable to a lot of diseases. And the reason for this is that the bananas we eat, called Cavendish bananas, are fundamentally clones of each other. There are no seeds. Every banana is grown basically by taking a cutting from one and turning it into another tree. So every Cavendish banana we eat is exactly the same genetically as every other one. And just like human identical twins, what afflicts one afflicts the others, reports Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. (1)

An especially brutal sickness called Fusarium Oxysporum Tropical Race Four (TR4), a soil-borne fungus, is ripping through the plants of the global Cavendish supply. Originating in Southeast Asia, the disease's march was long, slow and steady. But over the past decades or so, the problem suddenly jumped to Africa, Australia, and the Middle East. Many fear that soon it will spread to Latin America, where 82 percent of the world's $8.9 billion per year banana supply is grown. When it does eventually hit Central and South America, it could destroy a massive global industry and rewrite the landscape of fruit and nutrition in the Western world countries like America. (2) The only real solution is probably a mixture of diversification and GMOs. Most researchers seem to believe that the best bet for rapidly halting the spread of the disease is genetic modification. Since 1994, there has been some success modifying Cavendishes in labs and on test farms, and over the past four or five years researchers have managed to engineer Cavendishes and other bananas with a promising resistance to the disease. (2) But major banana companies like Chiquita and Dole have promised to never genetically modify their bananas—for no other reason than they know consumers are needlessly fearful of GMOs. But one question to ask—will the potential loss of 85 percent of all the world's bananas be enough to change their minds? (3) In talking about opposition to GMO crops, Dan Koeppel adds, “Bananas are likely not subject to the 'genie from the bottle' issue that biotech opponents cite—the idea that releasing modified foods into the environment will allow bizarre mutations to escape into the wild, having potentially devastating effects on health and the environment. That's virtually impossible for bananas, for the same reason re-engineering the fruit is so difficult. Bananas are sterile. A banana engineered for human consumption would, by definition, contain no seeds or pollen.” (1)

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Miscellaneous Facts

The average medium banana has about 100 calories (3.5 ounces). They contain water (70% of its weight), no fat, no cholesterol, about 400 mg potassium, 1 mg sodium, and 2 g of fiber. (4) More than 100 billion bananas are eaten every year in the world, making then the fourth most popular agricultural produce. Americans, who buy more bananas than apples and oranges combined, eat an average of 27 pounds of bananas per person every year. The highest average per capita consumption of bananas in the world is Uganda, where residents eat an average of 500 pounds of bananas per person every year. The Banana Club Museum ([url=http://www.bananaclub.com]http://www.bananaclub.com[/url]), located on Highway 111 in Mecca, CA, (just south of Palm Springs), houses the world's largest collection devoted to any one fruit. It contains more than 17,000 banana items. For $10 you can get a banana club card which they claim will allow for discounts and special treatment when you show it with a smile on your face. (5) Then there are banana peels for which many things are claimed: eliminating itching from bug bites or poison ivy; minimizing pain from scrapes or burns; eliminating warts; curing headaches; whitening teeth; the list goes on and on. (5)

Mythical Worries

It's sometimes said that eating a lot of bananas at once could be dangerous. It has even been suggested that eating more than six in one sitting could kill you. Can this really be true, asks David Rhodes. (6) The myth is that potassium levels in bananas are dangerously high and too many would kill you. So, how dangerous is potassium? Actually, it is crucial for survival, and can be found 'within every single cell of the body,' says Catherine Collins, a dietitian at St. George's Hospital in London. “We use it to help generate an electrical charge which helps the cell function properly. It helps keep your heart rate steady, it helps trigger insulin release form the pancreas to help control blood sugar, and more importantly keeps blood pressure in check.” (6) For a healthy person 'it would be impossible to overdose on bananas,' say Collins. “You would probably need around 400 bananas a day to build up the kind of potassium levels that would cause your heart to stop beating.” Radiation is another item that could cause some folks to worry about. Like may foods, bananas naturally contain some radioactive isotopes (Potassium K-40)--enough for the US-based think tank, Nuclear Threat Initiative, to warn that they can trigger sensors used at US ports to detect smuggled nuclear material. A typical banana contains 0.1 microsieverts of radiation. To put that in context, a typical CT scan in a hospital exposes humans to between 10 and 15 millisieverts—about 100,000 times more. (6) In 2013, a major media scare went something like this:

“Tuna carry Fukushima Japan quake radiation across Pacific to California.”

Turns out, a meal of Fukushima-tainted bluefin tuna would contain approximately 7.7 nanosieverts of radiation. That's about 5 % of the does acquired from the potassium in an uncontaminated store-bought banana. (7) So, enjoy your bananas while you can, and if you want some bluefin tuna, enjoy that also. References

1. Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, (New York, A Plume Book, 2008)
2. Mark Hay, “How GMOs offer unexpected salvation from a potential banana apocalypse,” Good Magazine, July 10, 2015
3. “How generic modification could save bananas from extinction,” American Council on Science and Health, July 17, 2015
4. June M. Lay, “The banana- food of the month,” healthnewsdigest.com, January 4, 2011
5. “Fun banana facts,” thebananapolice.com, November 9, 2013
6. David Rhodes, “Can eating more than six bananas at once kill you?”, bbc.com, September 13, 2015
7. Ross Pomeroy, “Bananas more radioactive than Fukushima tuna,” realclearscience.com, June 5, 2013