If you eat a banana in Europe or the U.S., there’s a 99% chance it was harvested just as green as the one in the picture.
Today, bananas are harvested unripe in their countries of origin because they’re much easier to transport that way, and they’re then fumigated with ethylene in large ripening facilities at their destination to allow them to ripen further. This way, the logistics process is less stressful during transport, and the customer gets a perfectly ripe banana at the store… though I don’t understand why they used bananas for the photo that were taken out of the ripening house too early.
In the US, bananas often hit the store shelves this color. They will ripen quickly over the following 3-4 days. You can decide to buy the ones that have ripened on the shelves or buy greener ones and let them ripen at home. Unripe bananas have several culinary uses, so it’s good to have this option
I much prefer to have a range of ripeness when buying bananas, otherwise you need to wait 4 days for them to ripen and now you have 24 hours to eat 8 bananas.
I didn’t know that. In Europe they’re often somewhat greenish when the shelve is freshly stocked but I think I never found such green ones pictured here… that’s what made me wonder.
Did it always have a nice sweet smell in the area?
I used to live close to a chocolate factory. Sometimes it smelled ok and a lot of people commented they like it. To me most of the time it smelt like burnt chocolate, which was kind of sickening.
Wondering if ripening possibly rotting bananas in large quantities would have a similar effect.
I dunno, we buy green bananas all the time as different people in the house have different banana ripeness preferences. We also eat heaps and buying them green means less trips to the shops
If you eat a banana in Europe or the U.S., there’s a 99% chance it was harvested just as green as the one in the picture.
Today, bananas are harvested unripe in their countries of origin because they’re much easier to transport that way, and they’re then fumigated with ethylene in large ripening facilities at their destination to allow them to ripen further. This way, the logistics process is less stressful during transport, and the customer gets a perfectly ripe banana at the store… though I don’t understand why they used bananas for the photo that were taken out of the ripening house too early.
In the US, bananas often hit the store shelves this color. They will ripen quickly over the following 3-4 days. You can decide to buy the ones that have ripened on the shelves or buy greener ones and let them ripen at home. Unripe bananas have several culinary uses, so it’s good to have this option
I much prefer to have a range of ripeness when buying bananas, otherwise you need to wait 4 days for them to ripen and now you have 24 hours to eat 8 bananas.
I didn’t know that. In Europe they’re often somewhat greenish when the shelve is freshly stocked but I think I never found such green ones pictured here… that’s what made me wonder.
Not far from where we used to live in the UK there was a road sign directing you to the “Banana depot”
This be one of the places you speak of
Did it always have a nice sweet smell in the area?
I used to live close to a chocolate factory. Sometimes it smelled ok and a lot of people commented they like it. To me most of the time it smelt like burnt chocolate, which was kind of sickening.
Wondering if ripening possibly rotting bananas in large quantities would have a similar effect.
Not a smell at all. I never got really close, but nothing wafted across the lands
I dunno, we buy green bananas all the time as different people in the house have different banana ripeness preferences. We also eat heaps and buying them green means less trips to the shops
…no one on Planet Earth doesn’t know this.