Finally back from Africa. Amazing bananas, amazing stories and photos. Exhausted. No blog entries, of course – but you’ll see tons over the next few weeks. In the meantime, thanks to my buddy Rich Snodsmith – also a shirt of the month contributor – here’s Trader Joe’s holding banana prices down. Bravo – especially considering that wholesale banana prices have more than doubled in that five-year period! Can anyone say “loss leader?”

But wait – is that nineteen-cent banana really a bargain? Most other stores sell fruit by the pound. Generally, a supermarket fruit weighs a bit more than six ounces – you get about two and a half bananas per pound (sure, sometimes they’re smaller, but I’m assuming bigger because at TJ’s, you get to choose.) What about banana prices? These days, you’re lucky to pay 59 cents for a pound of the fruit in most cities. Sixty-nine cents seems to be the average, and a dime more isn’t unheard

Here’s the math:

• At 59 cents for a pound, a single banana costs about 24 cents.
• Add ten cents to the bulk price, and you pay a bit less than 28 cents per fruit.
• Another dime at the scale, and a single banana sets you back almost 32 cents.

What about organics? They usually run about 99 cents a pound – yielding a whopping forty cents per banana.

The Trader Joe banana turns out to be the real deal – coming in at less than 50 cents per pound. They’re probably the cheapest bananas in America.

Thanks, Rich!

Homemade banana ice cream sammiches, Image from chubbyhubby.net

We don’t have to sit by while the “Morning Banana Diet” marches across the planet, raising prices for the fruit and making emaciated zombies of us all. Here’s a brand new recipe – from the Chubby Hubby Blog – for homemade banana ice cream, served between brownie cookies – that I hope will be the beginning of a massive counter-strike against the craze that begin a few months ago in Japan.

Banana tip: freeze them when they go brown. They keep for months, and you can use them to make all kinds of delicious stuff. Next in the arsenal: this banana pudding recipe – made with vanilla wafers – from the chitterlings.com soul food site (the recipe is almost at the bottom of the page.) We’re going to make some this week. Report, with pictures, to come.

Thanks to my Dad for suggesting the recipe.

The backstory? An opera singer told a talk show she’d lost over 30 pounds on the banana diet. The craze began from there.

Happy dieter, from a Reuters pic that accompanied a Time magazine story on the diet.

A spokesperson for Dole – the nation’s largest banana importer (second largest in the world) – told Great Britain’s Daily Mail that this was “the first time bananas have been so scarce. Right now, we are finding ourselves unable to meet demand.”

There was an earlier banana diet craze, in 1995, that began with the U.S. release of a book called “The Amazingly Simple Banana Diet,” by Clifford Thurlow (who also wrote a biography of Salvador Dali.) I couldn’t find any details on the actual program, sadly, or whether Japan’s morning banana regime was similar to it.

Does the diet work? Sure. If you eat fewer calories than you take in, then you’ll lose weight. If you skip your normal breakfast, and substitute a banana; and cut out alcohol and desserts – both of which might reasonably be assumed to be part of the diet of a person who might want to drop a few kilos, you’ll accomplish that goal. The books claim that the diet achieves weight loss through a lot of metabolic bunkum, which would be nice. In the 1920s, American banana companies hired armies of doctors to promote all kinds of health claims about the fruit, but even then, they pretty much stuck to the truth.

And even at three bucks a pound, you’ll still save money, after you weigh the price of what you’ve foregone, versus the single banana you’ve slotted in per day.

To get a little serious: as I’ve said in the past, the price of bananas is key to the fruit’s success – they are the cheap fruit. Things like disease and weather threaten to raise costs to point at which the fruit returns to its “genuine” state – an expensive, tropical rarity. I’ve advocated, as a solution to any future banana crisis, that importers look into providing a portfolio of banana varieties – as those same companies do with apples and citrus – that would diversify the crop and offer the fruit along a spectrum of tastes and prices. In its own ridiculous way, the Japan craze has proven that consumers will pay more for bananas if they that the fruit offers something more than just a partnership with corn flakes.

Photo: PR Newswire

Readers from other countries, you’ll just have to take my word for it: “The Banana Splits” was one of the strangest things ever presented to children as entertainment. It was an NBC show with costumes created by Sid and Marty Kroft, who might best be described as Walt Disney, split into two by genetic mutation, dropped into a vat of ergot, and unleashed onto the world with at least temporary carte blanche to produce television for adolescents and potheads. Since I was the former, and the grownups in my house were the latter, I have warm memories of Saturday morning gatherings to watch this program.

Four costumed creatures made up “The Banana Splits” (the name came from the rock band they formed; their jingle – also known as the ‘Tra La La’ song – was so genuinely catchy that it was appropriated as the hook for Bob Marley’s “Buffalo Soldiers.”) The quartet are Fleegle the Dog, Drooper the Lion, Bingo the Gorilla, and Snorky the Elephant. They live in a Banana Pad and drive in their Banana Buggy, which is more than most people in the banana world can say.

In a press release, Warner Bros. executive Jordan Sollitto, promised that the new version of the program would stay true to the original: “Everything that made The Banana Splits hugely popular in the ’60s is back,” he said. I believe this, especially since medical marijuana can be purchased by just about anybody who’s willing to say they have a hangnail in California, where the show is produced. Definitely replenish your stash prior to visiting the show’s website, whose accompanying soundtrack and multimedia you will find either completely hypnotic or very, very upsetting – just as the original show was.

Also, you can join a club and get an awesome membership card:

Read the hilariously titled press release: “Warner Bros. Serves Up Four Scoops of Hilarity With Relaunch.”

UPDATE: The BBC sort of debunks the Bob Marley/Banana Splits song similarity. Audio from both is included, so listen for yourself and decide.

Panama Disease-ravaged plantation in Asia (from Plant Health Progress.)

In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre – for the first time – publicly acknowledged the existence of Panama Disease (the incurable malady that wiped out the world’s banana crop in the first half of the 20th century, and that has devastated much of Asia over the past two decades) – in relation to his company’s mainstay product, though he downplayed the threat to the point of barely admitting it existed.

The story is headlined “New banana disease poses threat: How serious is open to debate.” In it, Aguirre described the disease as “limited,” and asserted that – when the disease arrives in Latin America – quarantine measures would “pre-empt and prepare” the advance and effects of the malady. I was interviewed for the story, and I disagreed, pointing out that such measures had failed most everywhere they’ve been tried in the past.

Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Photo by Steven M. Herppich.

I was glad to see that the reporter, James Pilcher, also contacted Randy Ploetz, the scientist who is probably the world’s best authority on the fungus. Ploetz is less grim and more circumspect than I am (as well as a lot smarter than me), but he’s still way down on the fencing-your-farm idea: international quarantines will not work,” he said. “If it did get over to Latin America somehow, it is almost impossible to stop. When and if that will happen. No one can say for sure.”

I’m quoted in the story as saying that the Cavendish banana is a “dead end.” That’s something I’ve come to believe even more since I wrote the book. None of us – not the CEO of the world’s largest banana company; not a dedicated scientist; nor an author who has books to sell – knows when Panama Disease will hit. But what I suspect we all know is that the Cavendish is indeed a biological (and therefore, ultimately, a commercial) cul-de-sac. Breeding a new version of the banana we all eat is nearly impossible. It is totally sterile. It produces no seeds. (Each Cavendish is a genetic duplicate of the other. That’s why each gets sick when the other does.) This makes it a poor candidate as a parent to any new banana, except if genetic engineering is used, a technique Chiquita and most consumers reject.

The answer is diversity: a robust banana aisle with four, five, or six different kinds of fruit. Those varieties are out there. The technology needed to deliver them to market – to keep them fresh and intact from the places they’re grown to the places they’re sold – would be considerable. But it be worth the investment. Right now, at my local Safeway, I can buy four kinds of peaches, five kinds of apples, four kinds of lettuce, and more. Why not bananas?

When Panama Disease struck and destroyed the earlier breed of banana that our grandparents ate, Chiquita executives claimed that they knew how to protect their fields from the disease. They spent years saying so. They were wrong. There has never been a technical solution to Panama Disease. In 1960, as the last plantations were succumbing to the old blight, Chiquita was on the verge of bankruptcy. It had spent decades denying that there was a problem. It then wasted more time trying to find an answer using a means that didn’t work. It came close to destroying its franchise product. Chiquita can make the same mistake again. It has already taken willful steps down that path, and it doesn’t even know it. Though Aguirre is right in saying that the danger has yet to arrive, the danger will arrive, and the solution Aguirre outlines absolutely will not work.

My key takeway from the Enquirer story: Chiquita acknowledges a problem on the horizon – and it has publicly embraced a strategy that cannot work.

As far as diversity is concerned, Aguirre said that the company has “been working for a number of years on different opportunities to grow different bananas.”

OK, readers. I am warning you right now: RANT ALERT!!!!

I can’t stand this kind of PR-speak. What the heck did the Chiquita CEO even say just there? I mean, these are bananas. Bananas! India, the Philippines, the South Pacific, and even Brazil offer dozens of wonderful banana types that might delight and intrigue American consumers. I’ve tasted them and they’re freakin’ AWESOME. They taste BETTER than ours. Haagen-Dazs to bucket vanilla better! Don’t “work” for “a number of years” on “opportunities.” Just grow some danged fruit and sell it to us! You’re CHIQUITA! Your JOB is to sell us bananas!

JIMINY CRICKET!

OK, I’m feeling better now. The point is that there are plenty of ways to get Panama Disease mitigated before it gets here, and the first step is to not put all of our bananas in the Cavendish basket.

One more thing: for years before the Gros Michel – the old banana – went functionally extinct, Chiquita executives not only denied that there was a problem, but they also denied that the Cavendish was a solution. It was a competitor that came up with the proper techniques needed to grow and ship the Cavendish that made it a viable supermarket banana. That competitor was Dole, whose market share tripled and has barely declined since. A new competitor, with a new banana, may be waiting for Chiquita as this round of Panama Disease emerges – and this time around, Chiquita may not be so lucky as to be so unlucky.

Note: For context on this story, you might want to read the magazine article my book is based on, in the entry above.

Australian banana researcher James Dale. Image: QUT

Cavendish is our supermarket banana – the one that’s under threat from the newly-remerged Panama Disease (see here for more info.) The Cavendish banana is absolutely seedless and sterile, so it cannot be bred conventionally; the only sway to ensure its future as a commercial fruit would be through genetic engineering (the alternative would be to allow the Cavendish to die out and replace it with a different – and as yet unidentified – banana variety.) Now, according to a news report from the Australia Broadcasting Company, a project spearheaded by Australian scientist James Dale, who runs the Queensland University of Technology’s Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, has begun the field test of such fruit – the first time lab-modified Cavendish have ever been put to large-scale outdoor trial. The test, the story says, will be “to improve the nutrient content and disease resistance of Cavendish bananas.”

Australia is in desperate banana straits right now, having lost much of its crop to poor weather and a subsequent Panama Disease attack. The field tests are partially being funded by a grant from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Dale, by the way, prefers to use the term “biofortification” to describe genetically engineered fruit – one of a long list of proposed terms for such processes, including “genetically modified,” “transgenic,” “GM,” “GMO,” and others. The desire to come up with a less-scary name for lab-developed foods is understandable, but misguided. The real problem is that people have been misled into thinking that all genetic modification of foods is terrifying. The responsibility for this comes partially from big agricultural companies who have behaved terribly when they have introduced modified products – but also from consumer groups who oppose all forms of genetic modification while failing to understand even the basics of the science behind it. )

Comment: The Australia trials will likely horrify some folks – possibly because earlier tests of genetic bananas weren’t focused on supermarket fruit, and this brings the prospect of a so-called “Frankenbanana” closer to home. But genetic engineering isn’t an absolutely scary prospect, and this kind of work is needed with bananas, both because they’re a vital subsistence food, and because they’re such a weak organism. And the Cavendish is a very safe banana to experiment on: with no seeds or pollen, there is zero – absolutely zero – chance of it the kind of cross-crop contamination occurring that we’ve seen with engineered corn. Bananas need a lot of help to survive – and the lab is one of the places that help is going to come from. Not that the Down Under effort is entirely altruistic, I’m sure: if a Panama Disease-resistant banana can be built by Dale and his team, they’ll also have built a gold mine.

Battles Banana-Wielding Thug.

In my book, I note that one observer described the banana as a “weapon of conquest” in Latin America. This doesn’t apply in Maryland, where a would-be thief attempted to use the fruit to rob a 7-Eleven – and was denied by a brave clerk.

Incredibly (or maybe not so incredibly), this isn’t the first time this has happened – and the last time, the guy got eighteen months in the hoosegow for his malfeasance (third item down.)

This:

Gotta go try one.

The most controversial part of my book is my assertion that biotech is key to saving the banana. I came by this assertion with a lot of difficulty – initially believing that most genetic engineering in our food supply was a bad thing. But, as usual, the issue isn’t black and white. With bananas, the shade of gray is especially green.

Read the piece here.

First good. Second, not so good.

More or less, maybe, according to the May issue of the science/tech/culture publication, because:

GMO agriculture may have a smaller carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops.

Organics may have a larger carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops.

In my book, I note that the promise of organic bananas is far less than we’d wish it to be – and the potential of GM bananas has been so undervalued (and so feared) as to be a factor in creating hunger in banana-dependent populations worldwide, as well as contributing to the reduction of genetic diversity in the global banana crop.

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