HOW BANANAS CONQUERED AMERICA

 

My spouse never fails to ask me what items to add to her shopping list. I always respond with “bananas.” While other produce languishes in the refrigerator fruit bin, bananas disappear faster than bagels or cookies. They are always calling my name from the counter space reserved for them, and I never disappoint.

To say that Americans take bananas for granted would be an understatement. No matter the season, we expect to find them piled high in the local supermarket. At convenience stores, fresh bananas are often displayed near the checkout.  

According to the online business platform, Statista, last year, we consumed over 9 billion pounds of bananas. The average American eats roughly 26.8 lbs. of fresh bananas each year.  Bananas remain the most purchased fruit by frequency and volume, making up about 1% of all grocery store sales in the country. It is the most heavily consumed fruit in the American diet.

The story of how bananas captured the American fruit market is fascinating. American innovation played an important role in moving the banana from a rare, exotic curiosity to the cheapest of all produce.

Before the Civil War, bananas were little known to consumers. Traders would throw some green bunches onto their schooner decks and hope to make it to New Orleans before the fruit ripened and spoiled. Northeastern ports were too much of a gamble. Bananas remained an expensive delicacy until the twentieth century.

Three new technologies changed the game. Modern transportation via steamship and railroads, along with the invention of refrigeration, brought bananas to the masses. In 1903, with the launching of the S.S. Venus, the first refrigerated produce boat, a quarter million pounds of bananas were imported from Latin America.

Almost all the bananas marketed in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe now come from Central America. However, the banana is not native to the Western Hemisphere. The Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia is the most likely center of origin. The western passage of the fruit was facilitated by the Portuguese in the late 15^th century – from the Guinea Coast to the Canary Islands. From there, the Spanish brought the fruit to the Caribbean and Central America.

The biological nature of the banana is as unique as its history and its shape. The banana is unlike any other fruit. (It is actually a berry.) The plant lacks a wood trunk, making it a tree-size herb. It has a palmlike crown and a fleshy green stalk that grows to a height of between twenty and forty feet.

In place of a root is a rhizome. Each female blossom becomes a single banana, then each cluster becomes a “hand,” and the massive bunch produces a “stem” of bananas. When this end is achieved, the cultivated plant is cut down, and a successor shoot takes over.

Banana picking and shipping are tricky businesses. They become edible only after leaving the mother plant. The sweetness and texture, valued by consumers, only occurs off the vine — and only if the fruit is plucked at the correct stage of maturity. Similar to strawberries, bananas are fragile and subject to rapid deterioration.

Philip Keep Reynolds, who wrote the classic profile, The Banana: Its History, Cultivation and Place Among Stable Foods, explains it best. “The necessity for infinite care in handling a bunch of bananas will be appreciated when it is realized that this fruit, when harvested, is practically a living organism. In the ripening process it generates heat within itself –- a few degrees above or below normal may stimulate too rapid ripening or cause checked vitality.”

Because of this process, the proper environment of cool, moist, and circulating air must be maintained during shipment. Reynolds calculated that a sixty-thousand-pound cargo of bananas generates the heat equivalent to burning a third of a ton of coal.

The discovery of ethylene gas and its relationship to bananas was the next breakthrough in transporting the product. A brief exposure to this gas is now used by suppliers to control the early ripening process. As we banana lovers know, the fruit continues to ripen on the store shelf. Forty per cent of consumers prefer to eat bananas at the “green-tip stage.” Only seven percent prefer the fully ripened banana.

Despite its popularity, the banana remains unloved, or at least ignored. Culinary praise (and expense) is more often reserved for the avocado, the mango, and the pomegranate. Thankfully, physicians and nutritionists take this odd fruit seriously.

The health benefits and nutritional value of the banana are impressive. This fruit supports heart health, digestion, and daily vitality. At 105 calories, a medium banana provides about 422 to 450 mg of potassium. Bananas contain 3 grams of dietary fiber. Their easily digestible carbohydrates provide a rapid, fat-free boost of natural energy before or after physical activity. Bananas offer vitamin B6 and tryptophan, an amino acid that your body converts into serotonin to help regulate mood and brain function. They are used to support weight loss because they’re relatively low in calories, nutrient-dense, and they’re filling.

One commentator has noted that bananas are a food for the whole of life. It is often the first solid food in an infant’s diet and the last solid food that can be managed by the elderly.

Then there are banana lovers like me that eat thousands of them during the long stretch in-between. I cannot imagine a morning without one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SUMMERTIME IN THE CITY

 

Our summer was capped off with an end of August trip to the New York City theater district. My nephew’s wedding took place in nearby New Jersey. It was a short drive through the Lincoln Tunnel to our Times Square hotel. Yes, the parking was $50.00 a day, but we avoided flying into La Guardia from Pittsburgh and the two expensive cab rides.

The late summer energy in and around Midtown Manhattan was a marvel to behold. The beautiful weather and influx of foreign tourists made the four blocks in every direction from Times Square a sea of exhilarated humanity. In order to check Google Maps, we needed to duck behind a lamp post to avoid being swept away.

Almost everyone we met was from some other country with an interesting story to tell. The local waiters and retail clerks always greeted us with a smile. They would not hesitate to leave their posts to guide us around a corner to point out our destination. Those who label “the city” cold and dangerous are missing out on the excitement of America’s 24/7 global epicenter of culture, finance, and human diversity.

Our focus on this excursion was Broadway. Some performances on our bucket list had just closed (Cats: The Jellicle Ball and Ragtime) and the new fall offerings had not yet opened (Galileo and Other Desert Cities). However, our five choices did not disappoint. We came to summarize our viewing experience as “three gunshots and two large bangs.”

The initial play, on the evening of our arrival, was Oh Mary! This irreverent 80 minute, one-act drama provided our first gunshot.  The play satirizes the life of Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination at Ford’s Theater. My guess is that this dark comedy will not be making the rounds in local community theaters anytime soon.

The play portrays Mary as an unhinged and raging alcoholic trapped in an unhappy marriage to a gay, closeted Abraham Lincoln. It mixes 19th-century historical figures with absurdist fiction, musical medleys, and biting camp humor.  

Initially, the show’s creator, Cole Escola, did not envision casting anyone besides himself to play Mary for what he thought would be a limited run. After the play became a runaway hit, nine actors have now played Mary in this very challenging performance.

Our second gunshot was from the famous duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton that ended the title character’s life. Hamilton has been on Broadway for over ten years. I thought our viewing would be a bit stale and anticlimactic. I was wrong. Hamilton was one of the most entertaining theater experiences of my life. Creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s combination of hip-hop score and his African American take on American history was a joy to behold.

The third gunshot was from a small, off Broadway, production of The Play That Goes Wrong. This offering was a fast-paced physical comedy and a “play within a play.” It tells the story of a college drama society’s disastrous opening night where everything goes wrong, bringing chaos to the stage and laughs from the audience. At the end of the play, the villain is shot and the entire set collapses on the actors. Great fun, with the cast often going off script to interact with the patrons.

Our first large bang (in fact, many big booms) occurred in the over-the-top production of The Lost Boys. This musical is a major theatrical spectacle with incredible special effects, first rate acting, and memorable songs. This year, The Lost Boys won four Tonys including best performance by an actor and actress in a featured role.

The plot involves a mother and her two teenage sons. Looking for a fresh start, they move to the fictional boardwalk town of Santa Carla, California. Instead, they find a “band” of teenage vampires. The script uses some of the scenes from the 1987 cult film starring Kiefer Sutherland, but revises the roles of the female characters, giving them more agency.

For over two hours the action is nonstop. After the final song, “If We Make It Through the Night” there is a dramatic loud boom and a sudden drop to pitch darkness.

Our last selection, Operation Mincemeat, won high praise in London and made its way to Broadway in March of 2025. It has become a major commercial success and gained critical acclaim.

The musical depicts the true story of a 1943 British military deception plan during World War II. British Intelligence used a dead body with fake papers to trick Nazi Germany into expecting an invasion of Greece and Sardinia instead of Sicily. Hitler believed the fake papers and moved his troops to Greece and the Balkans, allowing the Allies to capture Sicily with far less resistance.

While the film by the same name was a drama starring Colin Firth, the musical is straight comedy pulled off by five actors, each playing dozens of roles. Our final theatrical “bang” was the high-energy, theatrical climax—the explosive final number of the show.

In addition to our theater selections, museums were high on our list. New exhibits at the Met were outstanding. We were particularly blown away by the recent renovations to and art installations at the Henry Clay Frick Mansion (now museum) facing Central Park.

Summertime in the city was an experience that will provide us with many pleasant, year-round memories.