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by bduerst
4306 days ago
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I think you're making it out to be worse than it really is. Bananas are heavily chemically treated with ethylene, an inert gas which causes plants to ripen faster and is harmless to humans. (Fun fact: It's why bananas are never put next to other fruit in the supermarket, because they will cause other fruit to ripen and spoil faster.) Bananas also haven't been a monoculture since day 1 either - but have been developed that way through centuries of selective breeding. The article outlines the monoculture problem quite well, but doesn't really mention that it's because the consumable plant [mostly] only reproduces asexually. What's wrong with using tiny stickers on fruit for 'branding'? |
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Indeed, with food production, the evidence and points of view are always very diverse and nuanced. It's a complex subject--endless, really.
Here's a clip about banana chemical treatment...
> "...Zemurray finally addressed the problem. He found a solution, which he called 'Bordeaux Mixture' and that combined copper sulphate, water, and lime. Zemurray's experts cautioned him against its overuse but he had it pumped on the plantations in increasing quantity. It was a cocktail with quite a pleasant name, but the giveaway was in the title of those employed to spray and pump it: veneneros, or for want of a better translation, 'poisoners'
I would be very interested to find out if the industry decreased the pesticide/fungicide load since this was documented. I'm quoting secondhand here, Chapman notes in the 2007 book
> Of the world's food crops, the banana is the most chemically treated (so we depend on its skin's ability to prevent disease)
The story of marketing bananas is such a strange one. The 'Father of Public Relations', Edward Bernays, was heavily involved. There isn't a compelling dietary reason to eat bananas (expect, I suppose, if it's the only thing you've got). They resorted to the same marketing tactics that were used to sell cigarettes.
> "Samuel Crowther...looking back on nearly twenty years later on these early days of United Fruit in his book The Romance and Rise of the American Tropics, what was being discovered was that 'demand is a thing which must be created" (51)
Without getting into too much of a discussion about health and diet... I find that the heuristic that "anything new is bad" seems to work pretty well with food. Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, factory farms, etc.
The history of bananas shows that the production and demand for the fruit is both very new and completely artificial.
Again, please feel free to draw your own conclusions. The only point to make here is that I found the reading surprisingly fascinating -- a banana is not just a banana.