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See also: Kitchen tips on Bananas, Banana Bread Article
BANANAS
Supposedly, one of the first shipments of bananas to reach the colonies was in 1690 at Salem, Mass. They tried boiling them with pork. It took nearly 200 years after that culinary disaster for bananas to catch on with North Americans. Today, average consumption is over 30 pounds.
There are more than 500 different varieties of bananas.
Bananas trees are not trees. The banana plant is a giant herb.
Unripe bananas have about 25% starch and only 1% sugar. Natural enzyme action converts this high starch content to sugar, so ripe bananas have a 20% sugar content.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Europeans knew the banana as the "Indian Fig".
The terms 'bee's knees,' 'the cat's pajamas,' and 'Yes, we have no bananas' were all coined by American cartoonist Tad Dorgan.
One variety of banana, the 'Ice Cream Banana', is BLUE. It turns yellow like other bananas when ripe, and has a taste like vanilla custard and a marshmallow texture.
‘Red bananas’ are maroon to dark purple when ripe, and even the fruit inside can have a slight pinkish color.
The average banana contains .6 grams fat.
Until the early 1800s in Hawaii, most banana varieties were 'kapu' - forbidden for women of Hawaii to eat, under penalty of death.
The very heart of the trunk of a banana 'tree' - inside the layers of bark fiber, is a white tube. It may be cooked, and has a taste and texture similar to bamboo shoots.
India, with rich bio-diversity of banana and plantain, is the largest producer and consumer with estimated production of 16 million tonnes of bananas annually. India's domestic production alone exceeds the entire world trade.
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