Bananas are great — until one tries to kill you

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/12/2016 (3198 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I do not wish to alarm anyone, but I woke up this morning with some serious concerns about the humble banana.

It seems bright yellow bananas have been lighting up the Internet lately, with bunches of upbeat news reports praising the health benefits of one of the world’s most widely consumed fruits.

For instance, the landing page on my office computer recently featured a story from the website Eat This, Not That with a headline that breathlessly chirped: 21 Amazing Things That Happen To Your Body When You Eat Bananas.

No. 21 boldly stated the potassium-rich fruit will help you build lean muscle mass. “A good source of magnesium, bananas can help with muscle contraction and relaxation as well as protein synthesis — which, in turn, increases lean muscle mass,” it declared.

Feeling a tad bloated? Well, according to amazing thing No. 16, bananas are the answer: “Belly bloat makes even the most toned six-packer look like they just downed a six-pack of Coors. Fight back against the gas and water retention with bananas. One recent study found that women who ate a banana twice daily as a pre-meal snack for 60 days reduced their belly-bloat by 50 per cent!”

The pro-banana news reports go on and on, but I think you are getting the thrust of their gist, so to speak. To be fair, I personally have written my share of columns singing their praises.

A few years back, I wrote about a guy named Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez, a 112-year-old self-taught musician, coal miner and gin rummy aficionado from western New York who had just been declared the world’s oldest man by Guinness World Records.

Salustiano, better known to his friends as “Shorty,” credited his amazing longevity to a simple dietary habit — eating a single bright-yellow banana every day. Mind you, just three months after being handed the title of world’s oldest man, this banana-lover shuffled off his mortal coil, so to speak.

I once even went so far as to write a heart-warming poem about the life-sustaining qualities of bananas. Here it is: “Roses are red/Violets are blue/Bananas are full of potassium/And they’re easy to chew!”

But the medical point I am trying to make today is that, even though bananas are enjoying their day in the media sun at the moment, it would be irresponsible of us not to present a balanced report wherein we thoughtfully examine the dark side of bananas.

For starters, I am holding in my hands two news reports about bananas that will cause you to wet yourself. According to Britain’s Evening Standard, catering staff at London’s Royal Free Hospital were terrified when a four-inch tarantula came scuttling out of a box of freshly delivered bananas.

“It looks as though this spider has travelled more than 5,400 miles from its home of Costa Rica to London in a box of bananas,” Insp. Anthony Pulfer said. “It appears to be in good health, despite a long journey, but it’s also lucky not to have been accidentally chopped and cooked with the other fruit.”

Even more alarming was the discovery of a poisonous Brazilian wandering spider that popped up in the fruit display at a German supermarket.

“The spider was quite large and obviously not a normal, everyday variety of harmless spider in Germany, so the customer panicked and store staff quickly called police and told people to stay away from the banana display,” the story said.

Scary spiders aside, the real health hazard posed by this seemingly innocent fruit strikes a little closer to home, by which I mean my kitchen counter, where every other week my wife will plop down a large bunch of yellow bananas.

Day after day, I will walk by these bananas and day after day, they will grow steadily darker, until eventually they turn the colour of charcoal briquettes, at which point my wife will pop them in the freezer, where they will quickly be frozen as hard as diamonds.

I think you know what is going to happen next. This morning, I innocently opened our freezer, which prompted a rogue frozen banana to launch itself kamikaze-style into mid-air, then plummet like a small black torpedo towards the ground, scoring a direct hit on my unprotected toes.

“AIEEEEEEE!” I bravely shrieked as a red welt throbbed on the top of my foot.

“What’s wrong, dear?” came my wife’s voice from our nearby bedroom.

“One of your (very bad word) frozen bananas jumped out of the freezer and speared me in the foot!” I replied.

“Oh,” my wife sniffed. “Put it back in the freezer, honey, because I’m going to make banana bread.”

And that’s my main complaint. My wife has literally cornered the world market in frozen black bananas and yet, despite countless promises, she never finds the time to transform them into delicious baked goods.

We are almost out of space, so let’s take a moment to summarize today’s scientific findings:

• Bananas will help you live forever;

• Bananas will probably kill you;

• If you want banana bread, it would be much safer to go to a bakery.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca