Having personally had experience with thousands of them in my life, I can sincerely attest that bananas are a lifesaver. When you just woke up and feel hungry and looking for some energy in your breakfast, banana is the answer (try it with a peanut butter sandwich! They go well together). When you've had a long Vegas weekend and you've eaten nothing but junk and looking for some "clean food," banana is the answer. When you're in the midst of a marathon and you're feeling energy levels going down, a banana is the answer. When you're like me and can't fall asleep on an empty stomach but need something right before bedtime that won't damage the body too much like greasy food, banana is the answer. Or if you're like the dodgeball guy I knew who wanted to win so badly he didn't sleep or eat the whole weekend when playing the National Dodgeball Championship, and collapsed at the end of the tournament, he needed something right then and there and (surprise!) a banana was the answer.
But they can't be infected bananas. The guy right outside my workplace operating a fruit stand sold me some defective bananas one time; they looked bright and yellow on the outside but had turned into that brown jelly-goo substance inside (turned soft) and as bananas go, because one banana was infected, the whole batch got stuck with it. (Also another reason to break up the bananas from their bunch and lay them out one by one, even though it seems sad to separate the bananas from their family. I would not do that if they were humans!)
Apparently, one of the further negative consequences of climate change is that it's causing destruction in the banana population, where changes in moisture and temperature conditions in banana-rich areas has in the long term caused more instances of the disease black sigatoka, which decrease fruit population. This was also the subject of a recent Freakonomics episode, which both MJ and I listened to. Did you know that bananas are actually a "berry," so they should be grouped with strawberries and blackberries? Apparently the whole world subsists on one specific kind of bananas, the Cavendish banana (banana ancestors used to have seeds in them! Weird) but the Cavendish banana is like an endangered species (similar to a black rhino or spotted owl) due to the disease spreading throughout Latin America, and now (food) scientists are trying to engineer the bananas' DNA. I understand the ethical dilemmas surrounding engineering live beings especially human beings (the risk of creating clones and clone armies by some mad scientist persists in people's mind, especially since certain states like the Chinese are desperate to gain an edge in new next technological and scientific wave and are willing to stretch the limits of ethical acceptability) but genetically engineering foods is less of an issue for me, especially when it allows for healthier, better tasting foods like bananas.
Seriously, some foods can alter moods. On a windy, rainy, lonely day like today that I'm away from MJ and miss her, I can be depressed and need a pick-me-up or something to enhance the mood, or just to avoid being hangry. Heck, it doesn't even need to be cold and rainy, I can be going about my day but without realizing it be in a bad mood all of a sudden (tricky moods, they're so fickle and change all the time) so I should eat a banana periodically just to make me feel better, if not at least to get some energy. And they're tasty! (I've told MJ many times to just eat something, or just eat a banana, I feel like it might help prevent hanger-fueled arguments).
Just the sound of a banana sounds resonant and pleasant to the ear, doesn't it? It's definitely more aesthetically pleasing than some other harsh-sounding names like watermelon and grapefruit (sounds like a monster!). There's a famous Japanese author named Yoshimoto Banana (a pen name) and also in current anime pop culture, there's a character in One Punch Man called Saitama who gives bananas to people to comfort them.
All hail bananas!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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