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[–] 57 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

If you eat a banana in Europe or the U.S., there’s a 99% chance it was harvested just as green as the one in the picture.

Today, bananas are harvested unripe in their countries of origin because they’re much easier to transport that way, and they’re then fumigated with ethylene in large ripening facilities at their destination to allow them to ripen further. This way, the logistics process is less stressful during transport, and the customer gets a perfectly ripe banana at the store... though I don’t understand why they used bananas for the photo that were taken out of the ripening house too early.

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  • [–] 28 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    In the US, bananas often hit the store shelves this color. They will ripen quickly over the following 3-4 days. You can decide to buy the ones that have ripened on the shelves or buy greener ones and let them ripen at home. Unripe bananas have several culinary uses, so it's good to have this option

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  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Not far from where we used to live in the UK there was a road sign directing you to the "Banana depot"

    This be one of the places you speak of

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  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Did it always have a nice sweet smell in the area?

    I used to live close to a chocolate factory. Sometimes it smelled ok and a lot of people commented they like it. To me most of the time it smelt like burnt chocolate, which was kind of sickening.

    Wondering if ripening possibly rotting bananas in large quantities would have a similar effect.

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  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago

    I dunno, we buy green bananas all the time as different people in the house have different banana ripeness preferences. We also eat heaps and buying them green means less trips to the shops

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