Bananas - Ingredients and Use

Fruit bananas have become so commonplace for us that we almost forgot their tropical origins. Each German consumes around 12 kilos per year - as a smoothie, nectar, as chips or raw. The equator fruit is one of our staple foods. There are good reasons for this: The yellow powerhouses, also called paradise figs, contain a lot of nutrients.

contents

• ingredients
• Against congestion
• Banana porridge for digestion
• Green or yellow, ripe or immature?
• banana Botany
• Why is the banana crooked??
• What is banana??
• useful information
• "The birds have brought them"
• Islam brings the banana
• The European expansion
• The banana republic
• Banana hands and banana fingers
• banana trade
• The bread of the world
• Too precious for the garbage
• Bowls against stitches
• Bowls against wrinkles

First of all, the most important facts about the exotic fruits are briefly summarized:

• The berry fruits originate from Southeast Asia, but thrive everywhere near the equator.
• Cooked and sweet bananas are the third most important food in the world.
• The fruits provide energy, minerals and vitamins.
• The bowls also contain valuable ingredients.
• The fruits are primarily a food source, but can also be used for diarrhea and constipation.

Bananas are healthy power fruits. (Image: nata_vkusidey / fotolia.com)

ingredients

100 grams of the fruit provide 22.8 grams of carbohydrates, 2.6 grams of fiber, 1.1 grams of protein and 0.3 grams of fat. Compared to other fruits, they have many calories, about 90 per 100 grams. That's a small banana. Calorie bombs are chpis. Those lack the water, and the calories increase to 290 per 100 grams.

Just as rich as in calories are the energy bolts of minerals and vitamin. In larger quantities they provide potassium and magnesium, as well as phosphorus, iron and zinc. With this mass of minerals and calories, they are ideal for athletes and people who work physically: Who jogs through the forest or drags stones, burns first calories, zwetens he consumes more while sweating magnesium and potassium. If both are missing, the risk of cardiac arrhythmia increases.

The sweet yellows provide us with fewer vitamins than, for example, blueberries, but they achieve respectable levels of vitamins A, B6, C and K..

Against congestion

The "figs of paradise" are first of all a healthy food, not a medicinal plant. But they help with digestive problems, both constipation and diarrhea. In diarrhea they act because they contain pectin, a phytochemical that binds water in the gut. The fruits also provide the body with magnesium, which also helps to balance digestion. At the same time, pectin also stimulates digestion, thus helping against constipation. For particularly low-starch fruits are suitable. The rule is: the riper, the better.

Banana porridge for digestion

When the banana matures, the starch turns into sugar. This provides the body with energy faster, while the long-chain carbohydrates first have to be split. The best sugar donors are not the smooth yellow, but those with (few) brown spots. If the whole skin turns brownish, the fruit loses its vitamins. You should not eat immature bananas: The body uses cellulose with difficulty, which can even trigger abdominal pain.

Green or yellow, ripe or immature?

You should not eat immature bananas, but you should buy the fruits for ripening slightly green. Finally, leave the fruit just in the room. Refrigerators are not for bananas: below 12 degrees Celsius, these heat lovers lose their aroma. If you want to prevent a ripening, keep the temperature between 12 and 14 degrees Celsius.

Incidentally, at about 13 degrees Celsius, the fruits are also brought to Europe from Asia, Africa and America. On site they then ripen in special chambers. The transport in immature condition and the ripening ex situ is not only practical, so that no overripe fruits arrive in this country. It also serves the quality: If the fruits remain on the perennial, they burst and stick like flour in the mouth when eating.

banana Botany

The banana fruit is (as strange as it may be) a berry that grows on perennials. Sometimes we speak of "banana trees". This is biologically wrong, because the plant develops its pseudo trunk from leaves that stiffen. The perennial produces fruits once, then dies. But not without having formed on the ground shoots that grow into new shrubs.

The pseudo trunk rises up to nine meters in height. The flowers mature for three months to the full fruit (so-called "fingers") and grow in the clusters of the plant in the middle of the perennial. The fruits in their shells are about six to 30 centimeters long and up to five centimeters thick.

Bananas grow in perennials of about 20 fruits each (Dieter Meyer / fotolia.com)

Why is the banana crooked??

The answer comes from the growth of each "finger". These form from the flowers in the middle of the perennial and extend in the direction of the sun. That is why they are often crooked - but there are also varieties.

What is banana??

The word derives from the Arabic name for finger. The approximately 20 fruits in an inflorescence were called "hand", with the individual fruits forming the "fingers".

useful information

• We eat in Germany almost only the fruit banana (sweet banana, dessert banana). In Africa, on the other hand, cooking or vegetable bananas are at the center. This can only be eaten raw when fully ripe. Their taste is reminiscent of potatoes, and serves as a side dish to meat dishes, in stews and soups, is grilled, fried, baked, steamed or cooked.
• India produces the most bananas in the world. Important cultivation countries are also the "banana republic" Honduras, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador.
• The tropical fruits grow in a belt worldwide near the equator.
• Bananas are available in more than 1000 varieties, of which only a few are authorized in the EU.
• Unripe fruits are green and change color at maturity. Most are yellow, but there are also blue, purple and red.

"The birds have brought them"

The wild banana comes from the tropics of Malaysia, Myammar and Thailand. The people of Myammar believe that their ancestors learned from the birds to eat the (much smaller wild) banana fruits. Anyway, Southeast Asians eat the delicacy already in the 7th century BC (v.u.Z.). Shortly thereafter, the plants spread in India.

The first Europeans to enjoy the southern fruit were probably followers of Alexander the Great, who advanced to India in 327 BCE. The later ancient Romans knew them as well.

Islam brings the banana

To a greater extent, the fruit did not reach the Mediterranean until the early Middle Ages with the spread of Islam. Muslim traders sold the Indian fruits in the markets of today's Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, Arab farmers planted them in Mesopotamia. Arabs also settled the plants in East Africa and Madagascar. Here the tropical fruits thrived excellently, because they found conditions as in the old homeland.

In Africa, the superfruit grew in the tropical belt from Kenya to the Ivory Coast, in central Africa as well as in the humid forests of the Congo basin. The fruits mutated, and some varieties lost their original black kernels in the light pulp.

The European expansion

In the 15th century, Spaniards and Portuguese set out to subdue the world, followed shortly thereafter by Dutchmen, French and British. The Portuguese settled the paradise figs in the Canary Islands, the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors on a large scale in America. The conditions in Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba or Venezuela were similar to those in Malaysia and Thailand.

The banana republic

In 1873, Jules Verne published the novel "Around the World in 80 Days" and inspired the Americans for the fruit bananas. In the book he praised the fruits as "healthy as bread and delicious as cream". Although the fruits had been known for a long time in North America, they were only sold as a rare exotic delicacy because they spoiled on the long transports.

In 1885, Andrew Preston and a partner founded the Boston Fruit Company. His idea was to use fast steamboats for transport, to bring the fruits to the markets of New England before they rot. The Fruit Company was more than successful and flooded the US with tons of cheap bananas without any slowdown in demand. On the contrary, the Americans consumed more and more of it.

Banana trade continues to shape Honduras today. (Image: weekender120 / fotolia.com)

By 1900, the Boston Fruit Company owned giant banana plantations on the Honduras coast, and the company became the country's largest employer. This began a long, destructive story between American Fruit Companies and the state of Honduras, nicknamed "banana republic.".

Boston Fruit became the United Fruit Company and notorious for exploiting the workers, staged coups to bring complacent politicians to power in Central America, and committed tax fraud. The group slowed down the development of Honduras and established a form of corrupt booty capitalism. While the fruit companies flourished, the country plunged into a continuous crisis. United Fruit became the largest fruit and sugar company in the world.

To date, Honduras is bearing the consequences of this colonial exploitation: weak national institutions, political dysfunction and nepotism, combined with one of the highest murder rates ever. The unrestrained violence of gangs controlling the cities forces thousands of families to flee north to the US, where the Border Control prosecutes them as "illegal refugees.".

Banana hands and banana fingers

The southern fruit does not thrive in Germany in the field, because it requires a lot of sun, lasting temperatures of over 27 degrees and abundant rainfall. In Central Europe it is too cold for that. For this, the perennials need shade, otherwise the fruits will enter.

A perennial grows for two years until it bears fruit, then it dies. The mother plant forms saplings, which take root and become new plants. These sprout red female flowers after eight months. In between, the fruits grow as well as a single brown male flower. About 20 bananas grow side by side in a "hand", a perennial carries up to 20 of them, so around 300 fruits.

banana trade

Although Southeast Asia is the ancient home of perennials, most of the fruits today come from Africa, Central America and the Caribbean islands. That's where people eat the most. Almost four-fifths of all the fruits eaten are plantains, not the sweet bananas eaten almost exclusively in this country.

Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica and Panama export sweet bananas to the US and Europe, Taiwan and the Philppines, while Brazil, Thailand and African countries cover their own needs with the fruits. Most bananas are exported from Ecuador. The country name means "equator", and better conditions to grow the fruit are nowhere to be found. One in four working people is involved in the banana business.

The bread of the world

Cooked and sweet bananas rank directly behind rice and cereals as the most important food worldwide. In Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, fruits are the most important source of vitamins, minerals, fiber, starch and sugar.

The people in the growing countries not only use the fruits: the leaves serve as "plates", fish, meat or rice can be wrapped and steamed in them. A tea from it should also help against inflammation of the bladder. They keep out the heat of the sun, replace the roof tiles in the rainforest, and serve as raw material for ropes. Over ripe fruits use the people in the cultivation countries as cattle feed, likewise the shells.

The Tanzanians produce an alcoholic beverage from the fruit, and in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the fruit pulp is a binder for cakes, bread or pies. In South America, fried plantains along with beans and rice are a staple food. The plantains can also be processed into salad. For this they are first cooked, and then prepared with spices, onions and dressing. But they can also be baked and are a basis for casseroles.

Due to the high starch content, dried fruits can be processed into flour, which is used in a similar way to cereal flour.

Banana peels can be used in many ways. (Image: Klaus Eppele / fotolia.com)

Too precious for the garbage

We usually throw the bowls away when we eat the fruit. That's a waste, at least when it comes to organic bananas. The shells are full of minerals, they contain nitrogen, sulfur, potassium and magnesium. These are plant fertilizers of the first order. All you need to do is cut the shells into small pieces and put these pieces next to the roots in the soil of your houseplants. Alternatively, you can put the bowls in a watering can, fill with water and leave the mixture for a few days. This results in a good liquid fertilizer.

For a tea, boil the skins for three minutes, then let the liquid draw for ten minutes and then pour off. This tea contains a lot of magnesium and tryptophan, plus potassium. It regulates blood pressure, relaxes and helps to fall asleep.

Bowls against stitches

Enzymes in the shells soften the skin. For example, splinters can be pulled out more easily. For this, place a fresh banana peel with the inside on the affected area for some time. Said enzymes also reduce insect bites.

Bowls against wrinkles

The shells are also a free mask for the eyes. They contain antioxidants that counteract wrinkles. Place a piece of peel on the skin and leave it there for ten minutes. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)