10 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT BANANAS

It's sailors' superstition. Some ships even ban Banana Boat sunscreen or Banana Republic clothes onboard. Nobody really knows the reason for sure. Some say it's because ships carrying bananas have to go fast so the fruit doesn't deteriorate, and as a result they cannot fish. Some say that the ripe fruit releases methane that can kill the sailors. Hypothesis apart, this makes me wonder, how the invention of the banana boat was even possible?

It's awfully hard to extract juice from bananas, even though they're 80% water. Have you ever tried squeezing one? Their molecular structure is just not very squeezable. The currently available banana juice is blended banana, not squeezed banana. Which is obviously cheating. But for some reason, Indian atomic scientists are trying to find a way to extract juice from banana. Yeah, atomic scientists. From the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Go figure.

This image is from their website. They don't state how many bananas were used to make this much juice.

In Monrovia, Maryland, a man hold up a store with a banana. The thief snatched one fruit from the counter and began hitting the clerk, who pulled out a knife. The man with the banana split with no profit from the crime, except for the banana, which was damaged by then. And in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a man hid a banana under his shirt and pretended it was a gun when trying to rob a store. He was caught by the store owner and ate the evidence while waiting for the cops. Strangely, he was charged with felony attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon. Not a very effective weapon, but a nutritious one.

In those countries, even though Cavendish is still king, there's plenty of variety of bananas. In Brazil, in any farmers' market one can find at least half a dozen types of bananas: baby bananas, plantains, purple bananas, apple bananas, silver bananas, and so on.

More on Brazil and Brazilian culture at The Good Blood http://thegoodblood.blogspot.com/
The Good Blood publishes a feature on fruits called Fruit Friday