OPINION: B-A-N-A-N-A-S

As the wise Gwen Stefani once said, “This [stuff] is bananas.” Sometimes you make discoveries as an adult that are world-altering. I had one of those a couple weeks ago regarding bananas.

Did you know bananas aren’t supposed to hurt your mouth when eating them? I sure didn’t. I’ve never been a huge fan of bananas tastewise, but, being a good source of vitamins and generally filling, I had started to eat quite a few of them once I moved here. I used them in smoothies in the morning or as an afternoon snack.

One day at work, I was grumpily eating my healthy snack, complaining that something so good for you shouldn’t be both hard to open and painful to eat. The look I got from my coworkers told me something I said was very wrong.

They were well aware of my general incompetence at banana opening, since I almost always made one of them do it for me. For some reason, whenever I try to open the peel, I just squish the fruit instead.

If my issues with opening a banana wasn’t what caused the strange looks, then it must be regarding the pain of eating a banana. When I eat bananas, it almost feels like eating a cactus. My tongue and the roof of my mouth feel prickly, like they’re getting an infinite number of tiny stab wounds. Even when I’m done eating, my mouth feels generally itchy for the next 15 to 20 minutes. Apparently this is not normal.

That was the day I discovered I had what was likely a minor banana allergy. Fine by me, that just means I have an excuse not to eat the unfortunately healthy fruit. As of now, the pain does not extend to banana bread, thank goodness.

I was briefly worried about some other fruits I enjoy much more than the banana. On Monday, I was sitting at my desk eating some pineapple when I quickly turned to Cheyenne. “Pineapple’s supposed to hurt, right?” I’m happy to lose the banana, but not eating pineapple would be a completely different story.

I was relieved to hear that pineapple was fine. Apparently, this fruit contains an enzyme called bromelain, which is technically a natural meat tenderizer, so it causes irritation and burning to your mouth. It’s also fairly acidic, which contributes to the mouth feel. Bananas are neither acidic nor contain bromelain.

Despite my dislike for bananas and their apparent dislike of me, I may be able to eat them without pain one day. The banana used by much of the world is constantly being changed by scientists in order to protect it from a menacing fungal disease.

There are over 1,000 types of bananas found throughout the world. However, the one found in almost every grocery store is the Cavendish banana. In fact, 99% of world banana exports are Cavendish bananas.

Once upon a time, the most popular banana was the Gros Michel, but that was almost completely wiped out in the 1950s by a fungus known as the Panama disease. Since then, the Cavendish has been used. Unfortunately, the Panama disease has developed a new strain that is now killing off the Cavendish as well.

In order to combat this, scientists are attempting to breed and gene edit bananas to create a banana that is immune to the fungal disease yet is still quick and easy to grow like the Cavendish banana.

I’m not sure what it is in the banana that my body doesn’t like, but maybe if they change it enough genetically, I’ll be fine?

On the other hand, rather than genetically changing the popular variety of banana, we could just switch to another type. If there are over 1,000 types of bananas in the world, surely there’s at least one that the general market would be willing to switch over to. Either way, the general populace will have to eventually get used to a new banana.

And for those confused by the difference in taste between banana-flavored products and the popular banana we eat today: Many say the Gros Michel banana was much more flavorful than the Cavendish banana. It is generally believed that the artificial banana flavor commonly used today was based on the Gros Michel, hence the different flavor. If bananas used to taste like that, I’d be a much bigger banana fan, despite the allergy.