Stop Doing Weird Things to My Banana
I regulary purchase and consume bananas because they are heathful, tasty and plentiful. I have become increasingly concerned lately about not being able to find a banana at an edible stage of ripenesss. At the supermarket they are all either green or black. I have bought the green ones and watched them carefully, ready to seize and consume when they ripened, but they all went straight to black. I have tried many brands, Dole, Del Monte, Turbana and the ubiquitous Chiquita - all the same. I even had one bunch that was green on the outside, but black on the inside!
I don't recall it being this way growing up. We would buy already ripe bananas and they would be good for about a week. We never bought green bananas because they would take way too long to ripen. We believed that these bananas were taken from the tree too soon, thus inferior.
I suspect they are doing unseemly things to my bananas. Things like bagging them while they are on the tree to force ripening. Giving them way too much fertilizer, water, and everything else to make them yield more, faster. Even the possibility of the existence of genes from genetically modified organisms(GMO) is a concern. My biggest fear is that bananas (and all consumable plants) will slowly become lifeless facsimile's of what they once were. So, a banana will look like a banana, but the pulp will be devoid of flavor and nutrients. The end result may well be more gross volume (i.e. profit) and less net nutrition.
New energy products like bio-diesel may seem the perfect solution to our energy needs, but if food products are grown without the intent for human consumption won't corporate scientists tinker with these crops genetic makeup so they yield more energy? This spells slow demise for our already questionable food supply. I might get a gallon of gas for under $3.00, but I won't be able to get a decent ear of corn for a good price because it's all a GMO, being grown to make ethanol. Already I can't seem to find a decent hamburger, or a plate of enchiladas that dont' taste like an American cheesburger!
The signs of a food supply in crisis are everywhere, but, for now, please just stop doing weird things to my banana.
1 Comments:
I have taken to buying fair traded bananas, which our co-op carries. They ripen just fine... but they aren't totally green when we buy them.
Sometimes I feel strangely lucky to live in a state where everything's pretty scaled down. The corn here is organic, heirloom, and yummy, because we can subscribe to local farms.
Dear little Green Mountain State.
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