Comments on: Is this the banana your grandchildren will eat?

By: dainel

dainel — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 10:42:00 +0000

This is the cheap kind. Costs about RM1-2 (US$0.35-0.70) for the whole hand.

BTW: I know the banana in the picture can reproduce. Had lots of them behind the house when I was a kid. They don’t need any human. But reproduction is asexual. The mature plant will “bud” daughters that grow in a circle all around the mother. My dad will just dig them up and plant them further apart in neat rows.

By: feenpuppy

feenpuppy — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:02:00 +0000

We call them ladyfingers or sugar bananas in Far North Queensland, Australia. They’re much sweeter in taste than the Cavendish, and have a different texture – somehow mushier and grittier at the same time. I also find the skin to be much thinner and sometimes harder to remove without damaging the fruit beneath it.

By: SamSam

SamSam — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:50:00 +0000

All y’all saying that you have eaten these and that they are as common as air wherever you live/went on vacation: stop. Unless you know it was a Goldfinger, there are many, many cultivars of short, stubby, delicious bananas. Some of them are catalogued here.

Just cause it’s short and stubby, doesn’t mean that it’s this banana.

The point of this one seems to be that it could be a replacement for the Cavendish, which makes it different from other short and stubby varieties you’ve eaten elsewhere. If American companies could just import the common bananas from Brazil or Peru or Thailand they would and no one would be worrying about the Cavendish being wiped out. The problem is that most of those varieties can’t be shipped far distances, either because they spoil quickly, don’t ripen off the tree, or whatever.

By: zarray

zarray — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 04:59:00 +0000

I’m looking forward to the days of matter replicators, and we can have food torrents.

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:35:00 +0000

Also, I don’t believe bananas should ever turn gray.

By: Alan Royle

Alan Royle — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:51:00 +0000

To the best of my knowledge, Black Sigatoka has so far been kept out of Australia (It makes the news every now and then when countries like the Philippines or New Guinea complain about our restrictions on imports. I love these bananas. Much sweeter than Cavendish, don’t keep as long and don’t look as banana-ish. I lived in Vietnam for a while and all the bananas tasted like Ladyfingers, but weren’t quite as squat.

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:48:00 +0000

She may object to your referring to that fact as “fun.” Then again, Mel Brooks would certainly characterize it so.

By: Donald Petersen

Donald Petersen — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:46:00 +0000

I suppose I should be extra-nice to my heirs. I gather it would be no trouble at all to poison me.

By: twianto

twianto — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 18:43:00 +0000

Right on. Cavendish was chosen because it was the one (surviving) cultivar that wasn’t susceptible to catastrophic diseases, could be shipped to the other end of the world
and stored there and whose taste was tolerable. The Cavendish Quasi-Monopoly(tm) is a result of “our global economy”.

But fruit logistics and storage technology have improved dramatically over the past decades so who knows…

By: ventolinmono/bot

ventolinmono/bot — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:10:00 +0000

In Mexico we have those little bananas. I remember eating them as a child about 15 years ago. We call them “dominicos” (The name comes from a catholic order.) And they are sweeter and the consistency is more creamy.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:46:00 +0000

I live near the largest pan-asian grocery store in New England*, I’ll go look.

* the music is awesome in there

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:41:00 +0000

These bananas are produced on equipment used to manufacture nuts.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Thats second sentence does not make as much sense as you wanted it to.

By: mw84

mw84 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Its a place called wholesome choice on the intersection of la palma and imperial in yorba linda. pretty cool store for weird/cheap foods.

By: zarray

zarray — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:33:00 +0000

Well it depends if they can be shipped across half the globe.

By: zarray

zarray — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:26:00 +0000

Were they like tapioca lumps? I think the little black bits are seed germs, but not full ones. When I went to India I got try a ‘wild’ one full of seeds, and it was like trying to eat a nasty boba tea in a skin. I wouldn’t do it again.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X8ApRy9IsZE/TlNrHwNg0bI/AAAAAAAAEFA/Sg10YEQQTL4/s1600/banana+seed.jpg

By: GuidoMescalito

GuidoMescalito — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:25:00 +0000

- sigh – BB, you have posted an article about bananas that does not contain the words:
‘Just Look At…’ in the title!

By: J

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:13:00 +0000

I think I have had the Goldfinger banana. Purchased from a sidewalk fruit guy in Sunset Park Brooklyn. He didn’t speak English and we didn’t speak Cantonese, so we never got the details. But it was clearly not the same (Cavendish) variety as we usually get so we bought a bunch. It was sweet, not mealy, softer than a Cavendish.

By: zarray

zarray — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:09:00 +0000

I was taught it was from trade being disrupted by WWI.

By: zarray

zarray — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:07:00 +0000

A banana is nothing more than an overachieving mineral.

By: zarray

zarray — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:05:00 +0000

I’ve always thought it was more of a pear taste. Also interesting that it was used in aircraft fabric, I thought airplane museums smelled a bit funny.

By: zarray

zarray — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:56:00 +0000

When do we let facts get in the way of our neuroses?

By: Beth Z

Beth Z — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:29:00 +0000

I’m working on reading a book on the subject, and am intensely curious to try these new Goldfingers. Although the book says they may not be a proper replacement for the Cavendish because they’re a bit more tart than the current bananas, like a pear or an apple. Sadly, the only bananas we get in the store are the Cavendish or sometimes the little red bananas, as well as plantains.

By: penguinchris

penguinchris — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 13:02:00 +0000

Might be the “Super Irvine” market on Culver next to the 5, in Irvine. If it isn’t the same one @boingboing-6c0678ae611febae9cbebe2e45ca5d86:disqus is referring to, it is at least a Persian market and it has a variety of interesting fruits (and a different selection than the more ubiquitous Asian grocery stores) though I can’t confirm whether they have these or not. I vaguely remember looking at a type of banana I hadn’t seen before, but it’s been several months since I’ve been there.

By: Tom Fox

Tom Fox — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:52:00 +0000

That looks a lot like a banana My Uncle-in-law gave us from the Zoo he works in in Ohio. I think it was still too ripe when I tried to eat it as it wasn’t very nice at all!

By: Dale Thomas

Dale Thomas — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 12:41:00 +0000

I live on the Island of Antigua and Barbuda and that is just a different type of banana their are many different types from the same banana family growing on this island.

By: twianto

twianto — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:15:00 +0000

Totally depends on the banana. There’s a type of small banana in Vietnam that’s just green and that’s great as it is.

Your Cavendish ain’t everybody else’s yardstick. (A green Cavendish or even a yellow one without brown specks for that matter _does_ taste like grass though.)

By: peterkvt80

peterkvt80 — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:04:00 +0000

Banana plants are exactly the same as trees, except without the wood and the bark.

By: Learned

Learned — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:43:00 +0000

The typical pattern for allergies is that you are exposed to something, become sensitive to it, and then later react to it. My understanding is that y0u are not generally allergic to something the first time you encounter it. It could be that you were sensitized in your early exposures and then the allergy developed during the time off.

For example, my dad has to carry an epi-pen around because of bee stings. That only became a problem for him after having been stung at least twice. Once when he had no reaction, and the second time when he discovered how severe his new reaction was. My worst allergy is to oak pollen, and it only surfaced almost twenty years after moving to a city with lots of oak trees.

There are hundreds of varieties of bananas, I have no idea if the variety would matter. Most varieties don’t travel well, which is one reason we eat the Cavendish. If the variety does matter you could go on an exciting banana eating tour of the world. It would be spiced up by the uncertainty of whether you would have a reaction and the possibility of being somewhere where medical care was unavailable.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 09:25:00 +0000

Cavendish is the *only* banana available in the US?

If you shop in stores that are only frequented by gringo types, yes. If you live in an area with a large Latino or Asian population, there are usually a couple of varieties even in the big supermarkets.