January 31, 2018 • 50 mins
B-A-N-A-N-A-S. The most popular fruit in the world has driven food technology and military coups alike. It's also in danger of being wiped out. We peel back the disturbing history and science surrounding bananas.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Anny Rees and
I'm Lauren fog Obam and you guys, we need we
need to talk about bananas. We really do. If you
ever needed an example of politics and how it's involved
in your food, this is it. It's this. This one's
really upsetting. I'm really upset about it. I'm not sure
if I'm ever going to eat bananas again. I'm like,
(00:30):
not exaggerate, but don't click away, don't. Yeah no, I
mean it's delightful. I mean it's wonderful. It's good to
be educated. It is. And a quick note right at
the top, Yeah, we are not talking about plantains. They
are members of the banana family, but they are different
and worthy of their own episodes. Oh absolutely, yes, So
let's let's embark on this journey. Yeah yeah, no, there's
there's also some really fun information there is so bananas,
(00:54):
what aren't they Well? According to Dan Copple, who is
the author of Banana, The Fate of the Fruit That
Changed the World, very helpful in this research, the banana
is quote one of the most intriguing organisms on Earth.
First of all, it's parent plant is an herb, but
the banana itself is a berry. Botanically speaking, when we
(01:15):
say that something is a is a botanical berry, we
mean that it's a fruit that does not have a
stone in it, that is made from a single flower.
The plants, the banana plants, aren't trees, although they're sometimes
called trees, they're they're basically huge tubes of leaf stalks.
New leaves sprout up out from the center, and as
they get larger, the leaves and start to flatten out
(01:36):
and droop the old ones, forming that the trunk kind
of wither and fall. The banana plant generally grows about
three meters or ten feet tall, and it doesn't have
a season for blooming the way that like apples do.
They can flower any time of year. The flowers don't
need to be fertilized. They are sterile. Yes. Over the
course of about nine months, they'll grow into a bunch
(01:58):
or hand of up to a hundred seventy bananas. Yeah
quite a lot. Yeah, but they'll only do it once,
only one time, one time, and that's it. After that,
you have to grow a new plant if you want
more bananas. And for this reason, the banana plant is
a symbol in Buddhism. Of the ultimate uselessness of earthly things,
or at least that's that's what I read in a
(02:19):
History of Food by Magolon to St. Sumat, who I
do not think is a Buddhist, and I had trouble
confirming it with more direct sources. But it's a nice story.
I guess it reminds me of the sport, the poetry
about the sport, and the ultimate uselessness of Huh, lots
of useless foods and objects we talked about on the show. Apparently, Yeah,
(02:41):
that's keep listening, everybody. Um, Bananas do not have working seeds.
You get a new banana plant by making a cutting
of a shoote and and planting that cutting. Bunches are
harvested by hand or generally by machete. More specifically, they're
shipped green and very carefully kept at temp chures and
humidities meant to prevent ripening until they are ready, like
(03:04):
ready to go to the market. Um. The ripening process
is then triggered by a bath of ethylene gas, which
is this compound produced by fruits as they ripen, and
can also trigger unripe fruits to start ripening, like avocado.
Like avocado, Uh huh, um and the temperature then is
also increased to about sixty to sixty two degrees fahrenheit
(03:27):
very precise, that's a fifteen point six to sixteen point
seven degrees celsius. This allows the fruit to begin to
yellow just as it hits store shelves. Perfect. Yes, I
love the specificity. I know. Bananas, by the way, are
the most popular fruit in the world and they account
for sevent of all tropical fruit trade. Yeah, but they
(03:51):
are also a staple food in many places that grow
them are actually grown to be consumed domestically. Yeah, which
is one of the most surprising things to me. Um.
And even though there are nearly a thousand types of bananas,
of bananas sold in the US are the yellow Cavendish banana,
and they account for over half of the bananas grown
(04:14):
around the world. And apparently it's kind of seen as
a lesser banana where bananas are more common more commonly
grown in India, it's looked down upon as the hotel banana.
Yeah for those fancy people. Yeah. Uh. In terms of nutrition,
bananas are a very calorie dense food because they are
(04:36):
so sugary, about fourteen fourteen grams of sugar a piece,
which is more than a quarter of a can of coke. Yeah. Um,
a uk Zoo banned them a few years back from
their Primates diets for fear of chunky monkeys. Lauren, that
was excellent. I'm sorry and or you're welcome, thank you.
(05:00):
And unharvested banana is about one percent fruit toose, but
by the time it gets to the grocery shells and
the searches convert to sugars, it's about eight percent. Yeah,
not too long after that our old pal fermentation kicks in.
In some African countries, this means banana wine or banana beer.
Bananas are also, however, high in potassium, invited and c
(05:21):
and contain good stuff like fiber and electro lights and antioxidants.
And I think we've talked about this before, either in
person or on the show. I can't remember, but diet
and exercise enthusiasts are so divided about bananas. Um. You know.
I if you're watching your sugar, a'd say to probably
avoid them, But otherwise they're a good way to quell
a craving for something sweet without turning to less healthy
(05:44):
processed snacks. Yes, and here's an important question, Lauren, are
you peeling your bananas rolling? Probably what Yeah, as the
Internet was eager to tell us a couple of years back,
it is much easier to peel a banana from the
side that doesn't have the stem on it, which is
how I've always done it, because really, oh no, no, no,
(06:04):
that the stems are Oh yeah, I don't know if
you if you hold up the other end, the nubby end,
and kind of pinch that nub between your thumb and
four finger, it'll just come away and simultaneously split the
banana's skin into sections. Oh so it's easy, and plus
at that point you can use the stem as a handle.
(06:25):
That's handy. Oh oh, I didn't even mean to. Apart
from being eaten as is in school lunches or at
the end of races, bananas are used for all kinds
of things. Banana bread, bana putting, banana's, faster's, banas split
and ice cream, banana pancakes. Man, I had this banana
curry in India that was so good, and I would
have never thought to have put banana and curry, but
(06:47):
oh no, I believe you. I want that now. Immigrants
riving to Ellis Island were once handed bananas. I know.
According to PBS, you can use a banana peel to
help loosen a splinter, get rid of ink stains, mitigate
insect bites, or stop a scratched disc from skipping. Celebrities
(07:07):
like Jay Leno and Ronald Reagan used to be members
of the International Banana Club, which have thirty eight thousands
do paying members from twenty seven country And when you joined,
you got the option to pick a banana themed nickname.
I want to know so much more, but there's no
time the whole other episode. Clearly, there's also a cryptocurrency,
(07:32):
you know, like bitcoin, the value of which is tied
to the value of a kilogram of bananas on the
international market. Of course there is. It's called banana coin.
How have I not heard banana coin? Well, okay, so
let's talk about currency economics. Um, banana's pack is serious punch.
(07:52):
Daniel Stone at National Geographic put it this way. If
fruits were pop stars, the banana would be Beyonce. They
are the fourth most monetarily valuable food in the world,
behind only wheat, rice and milk. Yeah. Shaqda, a company
name I'm guessing you recognize, is the largest producer of
(08:12):
bananas as often. The export of bananas made eight point
nine billion in commercial sales and u S dollars. If
you include non exports and plantains, that numbers forty four
point one billion dollars the largest. The two largest growers
of bananas, China and India, making up thirty five percent
of banana and plantain yields, don't export hardly any at all,
(08:36):
but consume them within their own borders. Ecuador is the
largest exporter of bananas, and seventeen million tons, most of
which are cavendish, are exported globally every year. They are
the single most purchased item at American walmarts. That is
stunning to me. I guess, I don't know what else? Bread?
(08:57):
I don't, I don't bread or milk? Yeah. Oh. One
place that you will not find bananas is on crab boats.
There is such a wide anti banana superstition that some
crabbing crews even prohibit banana boat sunscreen and Banana Republic clothing.
No one is entirely sure how this got started, Okay.
(09:21):
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reports that
four million people depend on bananas as their primary caloric provider.
In some African countries, people eat an average of five
hundred pounds of bananas a year near like Victoria. The
Swahili word for food might also translate to banana. They
are one of the most important crops for about ten countries.
(09:44):
A lot of people depend on the banana for their
livelihood or as a food source that keeps them alive.
That's what makes this next part so so extra scary. Yeah,
so we we need to talk about the upcoming banana apocalypse. Yeah,
we really do. You've probably seen not so great headlines
(10:04):
like these banana apocalypse the race to save the world's
most popular fruit from the Washington Post CNNs. Why bananas
as we know them right now going extinct again? Um?
Has the end of the banana arrived from popular science?
And what they're referring to is a fungus called Fusarium
wilt a k a. The Panama disease. And this stuff
(10:25):
is no joke. It attacks the roots of banana plants
and the spores can survive for decades in the ground,
meaning it can stick to boots or anything else that
comes in contact with infected soil and easily spread that way.
The incubation period is two to three years too, so
you might not even know you've got a problem until
(10:45):
it's too late. The first strain, Race one, as it
was called, pretty much wiped out the grown Michelle a k.
A big mic type of banana, which until nive was
the most exported type of banana. There was even a
song of about this called yes we have no Bananas.
It's very up beat um penned in nineteen three. The
(11:06):
less flavorful, I guess I've never tried one. Uh no,
I have tried a Cavendish. I have never tried to
grow Michelle. The Cavendish is said to be less flavorful
than big Mike grow Michelle due to its resistance to
raise one. It's not less flavorful because well, we don't know. Yeah, yeah,
it replaced it because it was yeah, immune to that
(11:30):
version of the strain strain. But Caven dish banas are
not immune to the current strain of Panama disease Race four.
Race four was first isolated in Malaysia in nine nine.
Over ten thousand hectares of Cavendish bananas have been destroyed,
particularly in Australia and Southeast Asia because of this. Africa
(11:51):
in the Middle East saw the first cases of it
in and researchers believe Latin America, where most exported banas
are grown, is next. There's no cure for it, and
it's very difficult to isolate. Cavendish bananas aren't the only
variety at risk either. Race four could take out up
to eight of banana and planting prediction. If y'all have
(12:15):
ever played the board game Pandemic, yeah, the contagion map
for Race four kind of looks like that. It's specifically,
it looks like everyone is having a really bad time
playing it. Does it looks like? I love this game.
By the way, if you haven't played it, get it.
It looks like, right when you draw the you're already
in a bad spot and you draw the epidemic card. Oh,
(12:37):
and you're like, oh no, oh, it's over um. And
part of the problem here is that most domesticated bananas,
because of the way they're reproduced, are clones, meaning they're
all susceptible to the same things. Yeah, yeah, and that
that's why that's why any two bananas look so remarkably
alike and taste so remarkably like one of the articles
(12:58):
I was reading, and I wish I could remember which
one it was to give the writer proper credit related
them to like McDonald's Hamburger's, Yeah, the Big Mac. Yeah,
I saw that too. Um. In scientists planted genetically modified
Cavendish bananas in a place called Humpty Dew in Australia's
Northern Territory. Yeah, Australia. Yeah, others are trying to cross
breed to make a hybrid, but the Cavendish is pretty
(13:20):
much sterile, so it makes things difficult. And there are
other projects out there to promote alternate banana types that
might be more resistant. The aforementioned banana coin is actually
a crowdfunding project to develop the Lady Finger variety in
Laos for sale in China. But it's hard to get
alternatives going because caven Dish bananas are so mass produced
(13:42):
and so cheap. Yeah, so there's that. Yeah, how did
we get here? How did we get to a world
that's we got one single type of banana for most everybody.
That's what you know, um, and it's in danger. We'll
talk about it and more politics than we ever imagine.
After a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(14:12):
and we're back, Thank you. Sponsored bananas are one of
the first foodstuffs we humans cultivated. If we want to
go way wait, wait, wait, way back. Some scholars think
that it was a banana not an apple that Eve
accepted in the Garden of Eden. Has to do with
the height of human and the banana leaves being the
right size to cover her general and other things. But
(14:35):
that was the two I remember it. They were probably
first grown in Southeast Asia, possibly more for the practical
uses of the peels and the leaves. Recent archaeological evidence
discovered in Pepal New Guinea dates the oldest known banana
to five thousand BC, and perhaps even further back than that.
(14:56):
The first written mentioned of the fruit is from India
in five BC, and we can infer from these records
that bananas were grown similarly at the time as we
grow them today by cloning well um. We can also
infer that bananas might have been around in India as
far back as three thousand BC. When Alexander the Great
(15:18):
returned to Europe from India in three seven b C,
he brought with him bananas. That might be why when
our old pal Plenty the Elder wrote about them in
fifty C he said they were most likely native to
India between sixty three to fourteen BC. Roman Emperor Octavius
(15:39):
Augustus's personal physician and Tonius Musa was a vocal supporter
for growing bananas. Yes, they're in that genus. That's that's
the Yeah, that's the genus of of banana. Bananas were
brought to Africa and six d fifty c e by
Middle Eastern traders and armies. Probably there's some dispute about
(16:00):
this um. It is christened banan uh derivation of the
Arabic word for finger. Is around this time that banana
got swept up in the growing slave trade between northern
and Central Africa and Arab nations. After all, they are
a calorie dense food, which makes them a really good staple. Yeah,
but that was all by land, and bananas do not
(16:22):
travel well. Skip ahead to the fifteen hundreds and Spain
and Portugal are well oiled machines of exploration and exploitation.
They had found water roots to India, China and the Americas.
And although these water roots didn't speed trade enough to
get like a fresh African banana into Lisbon in a
timely manner, they were introducing staple and cash crops into
(16:46):
all of these new territories as they colonized. Their efforts
with bananas in the America's, starting with the Canary Islands
in the early fourteen hundreds, were so successful that some
contemporary travelers and explorers claimed that the fruit was native. Wow.
Did did spread thus throughout the Middle and South America
and the Caribbean? Yes, and including to England. I suppose
(17:08):
because in eighteen thirty four, the sixth Duke of Devonshire,
William Cavendish, got a shipment of a certain banana he
really liked. Yeah, it was the one that would become
known as the Cavendish. He had his gardener start to
cultivate them in their greenhouses. Along comes businessman Henry Meg's
in eighty nine, moving from the east coast of the
(17:30):
US to San Francisco to get on get in on
that gold rush action. He had an idea to build
a huge canning complex and a duck, which he did. However,
he didn't pay any of his investors back, which, as
you can imagine, annoyed them a little bit. He was
chased out of the country, eventually ending up in Chile.
(17:52):
Oh And that canning and duck complex, by the way,
was later renamed from Meg's Wharf to Fisherman's Wharf in
Safe for Disco. Wait what, yes, that's one of my
favorite kind of unrelated facts of the episode bananas. Okay,
all right, Yeah, Meg's eventually ended up in Chile, as
I said, and he built the country's first railroad. Then
he moved to Peru and put down twelve hundred miles
(18:15):
or about n kiometers of track and this made him
quite wealthy and sort of like a monarch in the
country under his new name Don and he also had
a nephew. This nephew, minor Copper Keith gets a job
with his uncle developing a railroad in Costa Rica. The
conditions were terrible and over five thousand of his workers
(18:37):
died and it would take twenty years to complete and
it was a total failure of a passenger train once
it was completed. But back near at the beginning of
the project, Keith had started planting bananas in cleared areas
around the tracks, which he sold for cheap to his workers.
And once the track was complete, he had this quick
way to get those bananas from these farms inland out
(18:58):
to the ports uh the edges of the island for
shipment to America, so he started doing that. Meanwhile, in
eighteen seventy one, Captain Lorenzo dow Baker started the first
American banana craze when he brought a hundred and sixty
bunches of gro Michelle bananas from Jamaica to Jersey City
(19:18):
and sold them for two bucks per bunch. I looked
it up, that's like thirty five bucks in today's money. Uh.
They were a pop fad and considered a delicacy. Americans
get their first wide scale exposure to the banana at
Philadelphia's eighteen seventy six World's Fair, and starting in the
eighteen eighties, banana recipes started proliferating in American cookbooks, both
(19:42):
banana and banana flavorings and including banana pudding. I went
on a nice rabbit hold about that. It appeared in
this eight seven joke go Mazers sitting at a table.
One of them says, this banana pudding is exquisite. It
tastes just like strawberries. And then the other one says,
and this strawberry shortcake is superb. One would think it
(20:04):
was made of bananas. It's a real Nie slapper. However,
refined victorians might be too ruffled by the suggestive shape
to purchase a banana, causing some merchants to wrap up
banana slices and foil and sell it that way. Amidst
all of this popularity, Captain Baker and a few entrepreneurs
(20:25):
got the idea to capitalize on banana banana madness, and
so he teamed up with one Andrew Preston to form
the Boston Fruit Company in eighty five. They were importers
of exotic tropical fruits in a Russian immigrant named Samuel's
and Murray actually changed the name to that but um
(20:47):
he moved to Alabama, where he saw his first banana.
He noticed that the Boston Fruit Company was tossing loads
of them out at the time because of how long
it took to move things places. The rule was a
banana with one freckle was turning and could be okay,
but two freckles, no, it was ripe, and it never
(21:07):
survived the trip to the store. But the Murray had
an idea on a way to sell these right bananas
destined for garbage. What he did was he bought all
of them up. He runned some space on the Illinois
Central Rail Railroad train, loaded it up with his banana purchase,
and he used the train telegrapher and conductor to get
(21:27):
a message to grocery store owners who wouldn't meet the train. Yeah,
and by some of the bananas. He was working against
the clock, selling right bananas out of a slow moving train.
This wasn't his last foray into the banana business. Oh,
will be coming back to him. Yeah. In in part
(21:49):
due to the influence of the banana companies, the American
military intervenes in Nicaragua to prevent land and labor reforms,
and this is the first of over thirty instances. Some
will discuss further. The U. S. Government would step in
to situations that might have impacted the banana companies, sometimes
(22:11):
at the behest of the banana companies. Yep, yeah um
up until most bananas were found in fancy hotels and
came with peeling instructions. An article covering that very topic,
how to peel Banana, appeared in Scientific American that same year.
(22:31):
Here's how they told you to do it. The fruit
is peeled by slitting the skin longitudinally and giving it
a rotary motion with the hands. The peel having been
thus detached. The fruit is cut into thin transverse slices,
which are dried in the sun or in a furnace.
It's very complicated. I don't I'm still trying to figure
(22:52):
out it's I think it's a twisted I don't know.
We're making a lot of hand gestures that aren't working.
Bananas started puffing up in all the cities all over
North America and Europe, allegedly thinks in part to a
man some call the French Johnny apple Seed Nicola Baldin,
who planted banana stems on the Caribbean islands. A year later,
(23:15):
in nineteen hundred, Americans devoured over a million banana bunches.
Also in eighteen nine, though, these three Sicilian brothers in
New Orleans, the Vaccaros brothers, began importing bananas into New Orleans,
starting a competing business to these already existing ones. And meanwhile,
(23:37):
Minor Keith's Costa Rican banana business was succeeding, but his
investment business took a huge hit when his bank filed
for bankruptcy. He loses one point five million dollars overnight,
so he arranges a merger with his biggest competitors, the
Boston Fruit Company. So in eighteen ninety nine they form
the United Fruit Company and immediately begin acquiring other growers
(24:01):
and distributors. Their transportation was so quick and reliable that
in nineteen o one, the government of Guatemala hired them
to run the National Post Service, and just three years later,
Guatemala contracted the company to construct and maintain the nation's
main rail line for years. Wow. It was a dictator
in Guatemala at the time. And I feel like there's
probably bribery involved. Yeah, probably, uh yeah. So, so they
(24:26):
were building the the this United Fruit Company out of
the Boston Fruit Company, and Minor Keith had this this,
this land, these railways, these ships, these bananas, and these
amazing profits. Yeah. I feel like the United Fruit Companies
just the shadow that hangs over this entire episode. Yeah,
oh um. Somewhere around and here. They also create a
(24:47):
subsidiary called the Fruit Dispatch Company for transportation, research and development,
and also marketing. I'm having trouble tracking down an exact
an exact date, but it definitely happened. And to transport
their banana as they used the United Fruit Company steamship service.
These boats were painted white to reflect the sun and
helped the fruit last longer, mostly bananas um so they
(25:10):
also went by the Great White Fleet and also banana boats.
Panama Disease Race one first shows up in you guessed it, Panama,
in n it In only five years, it decimated the
entire banana crop in Surinam. Wherever the disease struck, United
(25:30):
Fruit picked up and moved somewhere else in Latin America.
But everywhere they went, the disease seemed to follow, like
no matter how many incredibly toxic pesticides they spread, which
they definitely did. Uh. But beyond this mysterious banana disease,
they also brought with them local disaster. Mindful of profits
over propriety, they were in a business of bullying. They
(25:52):
would they would buy up land, tear down the natural
habitat to build plantations, essentially forced the people who lived
there into these low wage, indentured service tunes, and suppress
any labor movements that would come up, violently if necessary.
Latin Americans would come to refer to this company as
El Popo, the octopus. Octopus. Yeah, okay, so that brings
(26:18):
us to United Fruit, big player in this um. We're
gonna be talking more about how they impacted bananas and politics.
But first, but first, we're going to take a quick
breather for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(26:42):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay. This brings us
to the term banana republic. Yes, it's not just an
overpriced clothing brand. No, it's nut uh. It refers to
the power in this context banana producers wielded in the
tree and it was coined in nineteen o four by O.
Henry and his novel Cabbages and Kings. On a lighter note,
(27:06):
this is also when the banana split was invented, in
the middle of all of that amazing Victorian ice cream
counterculture exactly. Um, this is where it was invented in Pennsylvania. Anyway,
people like to fight about who the real creator is
and what a real banana split is. Do you know
how people are? Um? And remember the murray Our industrious
train banana salesman. In nineteen ten, he purchased five thousand
(27:31):
acres of land in Honduras for banana plantations. It's like catch. Though,
after he'd already made his purchase, he finds out the
president of Honduras isn't on board with the concessions he
was counting on, mostly around taxes, land and transportation. Oh so,
so what do you do? Do you pack up and
move to another country? No, you organize a military coup?
(27:54):
Oh right, obviously, um, two dudes Lee Christmas and machine
Gun Muloney snuck past US agents on a single small
ship with a single box of arms, and in a
few weeks after their arrival, the government collapses. What Zumurray
gets everything he asked for from the newly installed president
(28:17):
and the HUBBERB. Zumurray company sets up shop in the country.
That same year, Costa Rica opened the first lab studying
banana genetics. Instead of focusing on coming up with better bananas, though,
they instead decided to go the pesticide fungicide chemical route
to keep bananas nice and cold on ships. The Vaccaros's
(28:39):
company purchases most of the ice factories in New Orleans
in nineteen earning brother Joseph the nickname Ice King long
before adventure time. A year later, the Great White Fleet
was dry docked for a short period after super fascinating
historical dude Count Felix von Luckner sunk some of its ships.
Huh uh more about Oh, Now I want to know
(29:02):
about him? Oh, I had to look him up. It
was very interesting anyway. In nineteen twelve, the US government
steps in to stop a rebellion against the Honduran government,
allegedly to protect American banana workers. In nineteen fifteen, the U. S.
Army invades Haiti, then the Dominican Republic in nineteen sixteen,
and Cuba in nineteen seventeen, where they stayed till nineteen
(29:25):
thirty three, Panama in nineteen eighteen, Honduras in nineteen nineteen
for the presidential elections, and Guatemala in nineteen twenty and
a two week skirmish with Unionist in nineteen twenty five,
the U. S. Army intervened in the elections in Honduras
and in the striking in Panama, respectively. H Yeah in
(29:46):
nineteen twenty four. That was the same year that United
Fruit hired doctors too, endorsed mashed bananas as baby food,
and Dr Sydney Hass publicly advocated bananas as a curative
for children with Ciliak disease. They also launched what they
called the Home Economics Department, with the goal of familiarizing
(30:08):
housewives with the fruit and getting images of bananas and textbooks. Yeah,
they provided schools with a lot of free textbooks that
dedicated a lot to the banana, over fifteen million pieces
of literature around the world by a campaign that included
coupons for bananas on cereal boxes put banana in the
(30:28):
breakfast category, especially as a cereal topping for the first time.
And this was the first instance of a coupon coming
packaged with another product. A couple of years later, United
Fruits debuted dried banana chips and Panama disease spread to
New Zealand, Australia, China, India and the Canary Islands. Yeah,
(30:53):
crackdown by United Fruit on striking workers in Colombia was
the inspiration behind the Banana Company and its massacre in
the novel One hundred Years of Solitude. United Fruit funded
US trained vigilanti squads that turned their machine guns on
a crowd protesting crowd to end the strike. The incident
(31:14):
was covered up and to this day we're not sure
how many people died, and estimate from United Fruits pose
its about one thousand, but you know they're probably low balling.
To this day, the skirmishes between the right wing leftovers
of those squads and left wing gangs that Columbia. Columbia
is still dealing with that and the Justice Department revealed
(31:37):
in two thousand seven that Chaquida had spent more than
one point seven million dollars funding the right wing terrorist
group a u C in Columbia under the guise of
security between ninet and two thousand four, and the AUC
handles a large part of Columbia's cocaine exports. Shaquita was
fine twenty five million dollars. Jakida is the brand name
(32:02):
that United Fruit would become later on. Also in the twenties,
United Fruit launched a marketing campaign slash tour service on
their banana boats. Um. These these luxury cruise compartments and
tours of very carefully staged plantation scenery. Yeah, um and
the these crews luxury cruises. Um one one of the
(32:25):
big pushes that led tourism in these countries. And the
slogan of their cruise line was where the pirates hid
their gold. Yeah, I don't know about that, hu uh.
And and it was it was all just incredibly profitable.
By the late nineteen twenties, United Fruit. United Fruit had
sixty seven thousand workers in thirty two countries and one
(32:48):
point six million acres of land. They were worth over
a hundred million dollars, and in nineteen nine they bought
Zamuri out in exchange for over thirty one million dollars
in United Fruit stocks, making him the biggest shareholder. By
nineteen thirty, the ripening room that we discussed earlier in
the show had been developed to help with product quality control.
(33:13):
Banana workers go on strike and hunters In nineteen thirty two,
the strikers are fired and the leader of the movement
is assassinated. The US intervened in El Salvador later that
year as well. In nineteen forty four, the Chiquita brand
name debuts and uh they were writing off the popularity
of Carmen Miranda's banana dances. The Chakeda Banana slogan came
(33:35):
out the following year in a movie called Mr. Chakeda
Banana's Beauty Treatment. As the first time you heard the slogan,
um the whole thing the subjectifying of Latina women is
I don't have to tell you, but it's quite problematic,
and we did a whole episode on it for stuff
Mom never told you if you would like to look
it up. Pablo Naruda's nineteen fifty book of fifty poems,
(33:56):
Conto General, had a whole chapter about United for and
the devastation they caused. Um and here's a little, a
little piece, a little taste. The United Fruit Company reserved
for itself the most juicy place, the central coast of
my world, the delicate waste of America. It re baptized
(34:17):
these countries, banana republics, and over the sleeping dead, over
the unquiet heroes who won greatness, liberty, and banners. It
abolished free will, gave out imperial crowns, encouraged in the attracted,
the dictatorship of flies, flies sticky with with submissive blood
and marmalade, drunken flies that buzz over the tombs of
(34:41):
the people, circus flies, wise flies, expert at tyranny, A
corpse rolls, a thing without a name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit thrown on the garbage heat.
Oh yeah, I mean I love Bablo Naruta um well
Za Murray, the Banana Man, as he's sometimes known, retired
(35:04):
in nineteen fifty one. That same year, Guatemala becomes the
first Central American country to democratically elected leader Kobo A. Benz.
United Fruit is not a fan. His campaign included banana
workers rights, and they start looking for a way to
quote solve the problem he presents. Their solution was propelled
(35:27):
by purportedly retired Zumurray, who backed the publication of Report
on Guatemala, a book that claimed our Benz was quote
under Moscow's control. Yeah. This was, you know, Cold War,
during the height of the anti communism. Yes, every member
of Congress received a copy. And now they see a
quote crisis that threatens US interest. President Truman okays the
(35:51):
CIA to act in Guatemala. The US backs Colonel Carlos
Cristillo and the Liberation War against Communism, as from ponents
called it. Costillo used US bases in Nicaragua to force
our Bands into exile and dropped the legal actions he'd
been supporting against United Fruit. The whole thing influenced Ernesto
(36:13):
Guevara LH to believe revolutions in Latin America would only
succeed through violence. Costillo's US recognized government set up a
National Committee of Defense against Communism Communism to weed out
any remaining Our Bonds supporters. Oh, this was called Operations Success.
(36:33):
Two hundred thousand Guatemalans died. Okay um In We see
the first commercial Cavendish bananas introduced by Standard Fruit a
decade later. They were pretty much the norm because they
were more delicate than their predecessor gro Michelle. New best
practices when it came to handling and boxing were implemented,
(36:57):
and this led to marketing innovations like stickers on each
banana and waste to track bananas that eventually led to
the barcodes we used today. Yeah, a lot of the
banana shipping industry has turned into market like, like supermarket wide.
Harry Bellefonte's recording of the banana boat Songdo premiered in
(37:17):
nineteen fifty five. It was a traditional Jamaican call and
response song. So I've been around a while about banana
workers and you know, wanting to go home. But as
Foster was invented at Brennan's in New Orleans in ninety one.
In nineteen sixty, Shaquita opens a banana research center in Honduras,
helmed by Phil Roe. Roe would go on to become
(37:40):
the most prolific breeder of new banana species. Um. He
was a big advocate for it, including the hybrid Goldfinger.
After Fidel Castro took control of Cuban banana plantations, the
banana companies allowed the CIA's use of their freighters and
the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Vacaro
(38:03):
Brothers company was still kicking around. It had started operating
under the name Standard Fruit a little bit earlier in
the century, and in nineteen sixty four it did some
further rebranding, changing the company name two Doll that Do
whatever doll would be. In nineteen sixty seven, Shaqda printed
over ninety thousand recipe cards for the previously unheard of
(38:27):
banana and Peter butter sandwiches before nineteen okay yeah. Perhaps
in part due to this, global banana consumption reached four
billion pounds in nineteen and after taking over as chairman
of United Fruit in the nineteen seventies, Eli and Black
realized that the banana was not as big of a
moneymaker as he believed it to be. United Fruit had
(38:51):
spun up a lot of debt, and when Hurricane Fifi
hit in nineteen seventy four, um taking out significant chunk
of United Fruits. Honduran banana farms. Black sold the business. However,
the Securities and Exchange Commission the SEC in the US
wasn't done with him yet. A year later, they produced
(39:11):
evidence of an attempted two point five million dollar bribe
Black offered the President of Honduras to lower taxes on
banana X. After the accusation surfaced, Black killed himself by
jumping out of his office, which was located on the
forty three or fourth floor um United Fruit pleaded guilty
(39:35):
to bribery and night and pays a fourteen thousand dollar fine,
only only fourteen thousand sure. In the nineteen eighties, the
banana industry planted Cavendish bananas in Malaysia, which may have
inadvertently um been a huge favor to Panama disease raes
for Malaysia's where the disease originated. In this Belgian research
(40:01):
organization bio Diversity International, began collecting and distributing banana germ
cells from various species and then they would form the
Mussa Germ Plasm Transit Center in seven. The organization is
still around and now has a collection of more than
fifteen hundred species of banana in like growth viable samples
(40:24):
in the nineties, United Fruit attempt to kind of clean
up its image by rebranding as Chakida Brands International, and
they also used significant political contributions to influence to influence
international trade policies. Some European governments were placing these really
heavy tariffs on bananas from the Americas to help keep
plantations and trade in their own former colonies in Africa
(40:46):
and the East afloat, you know, where more of their
own influential citizens had financial interests. Time magazine later reported
that the CEO of Chikida dispensed so much cash to
politicians here in America that the Anton administration was ready
to mount a global trade war on his behalf. This
wouldn't be resolved until two thousand one, and Takeda would
(41:08):
sue the EU over these tariffs. More investigation by the
press would lead to a n Cincinnati inquire expose on
Hikida's use of worker rights, repression, harmful pesticides, bribery, and
all kinds of nasty political dealings in Honduras and Columbia.
The company would never challenge the facts, but this still
(41:31):
causes a huge mess that the company's shareholders sued the
company for losses the company sues the newspaper for maybe
illegally obtaining answering machine tapes. The court forces the paper
to fire the reporters and apologize. Yeah, they had to
fire the reporters. Phil Roe, the guy we mentioned earlier
(41:52):
who invented the gold finger banana and Honduras, hung himself
in his banana fields in two thousand one. Um. In
two thousand three, a genetic research lab focused on bananas
opened in Uganda, looking to build a better banana genetically speaking.
And in two thousand seven, doll was sued by a
workers rights group and wound up paying out two point
(42:13):
five million dollars. Yes, and they are now suing the
makers of the documentary called Bananas for defamation. Yes, and
Chiquita allegedly has a secret lab where they won't tell
anybody that they're working on what. Yeah, so supposedly there's
oh goodness, I forget where it's supposed to be, but yeah,
(42:36):
Costa Rica maybe yeah, I think so. Yeah, anyway, it's
maybe it's Jurassic Park. I don't know, Drassic Park of bananas. Okay,
well that is so, yeah, there we go. Hey, Hey
we get hey, we got through that. We did and um,
it's a lot we have to edit out a lot. Um,
(42:57):
but hopefully that gives you kind of a good over
view of banana history, of the banana history and uh,
you know, kind of leading into where it is today.
I I I don't believe from what I've read that
conditions have necessarily improved. No, but hopefully, um, knowing is
(43:20):
at least half part of the battles. And hey, you
can make a really good uh quick quick bread, fruit
based quick bread from ripe pears. Yeah, yeah, yeah you can. Yeah,
you didn't know more banana bread. It's fine. Yeah, and
that's well, we got to do the research on pairs.
Oh no, but I have a beat thing to end on. Um.
(43:42):
So I was curious about some banana sayings and banana humor,
the first being that's bananas and the context meaning crazy. Okay.
So in alban J. Pollock published The Underworld Speaks, which
was the book meant to help the FBI agents pick
out gangsters by their speech patterns. Where a choice saw
(44:04):
that jazz It includes this definition for its bananas. He's
sexually perverted a degenerate HM. Historians think this might be
because of the bent shape of bananas and bent itself
was slang for illegal or stolen at the time. This
slang definition meaning crazy seems to have been coined in
(44:24):
the sixties, but really took off in the seventies. This
could either be a reference to banana oil, which was
a slang term for the from the nine meaning nonsense
or persuasive talk like snake oil, or it may have
been a take on go ape um. It also could
have been from British soldiers slang out of the early
nineteen hundreds, meaning spoiled or rotten. Yeah, top banana meaning
(44:51):
the leader of an organization, our group um. This phrase
originated in the early nineteen hundreds and applied specifically to comedians.
Legend has it that it's a reference to burlesque comedian
Frank Lebowitz, whose show included handing out a banana to
the leading performer after a punchline. This act was so
well known by the nineteen fifties the term took on
(45:12):
the more general meaning and spawned second banana meaning supporting
actor are comedian, which is a great segue into our
next bit, banana humor. Banana bananas are I mean aside
from all of the literal facts about them, intrinsically hilarious. Yes,
they're the source of a lot of jokes and um,
(45:32):
a lot of cursing on my end while playing Mario
Kart sixty four. The first instance of some poor sods
flipping on a banana peal that we know of is
in the nineteen seventeen silent film The Flirt for Maximum Polarity.
It was a waiter carrying a tray of food and
he got fired immediately. Yeah, Sesame Streets banana phone debut
in nineteen sixty nine. A banana stuck in the tailpipe
(45:56):
of a police car was a joke in n Beverly
Hills the banana stand from the rest of development, there's
always money in the banana stand, and I'm a banana
came out and two that's and nine. I'm not going
to explain it, but to those of you that know
what I'm talking about, there you go. I didn't know
what it was, but it was included, and I looked
it up and I'm like, why is this a thing? Nonetheless,
(46:20):
it is a thing. I'll have to look it up
myself later or don't. Okay, perfect that is our banana episode.
Finally requested, I hope that UM, I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah,
I hope, I hope it. I hope it taught you
many things about America, imperialism, and industry, which actually is
(46:47):
a great segue into our first Listener mail. Frequent writer
Gail sent does this note about garlic. I watched an
episode and a new Netflix documentary series called Rotten. This
particular episode that I watched was about garlic and how
in China some companies force prisoners to do nothing but
peel garlic for long hours every single day. Some of
(47:07):
the prisoners had lost their fingernails. I didn't quite understand
that it had something to do with how they hand
peeled the garlic without any protective equipment like gloves, etcetera.
And they would peel garlic with their teeth. I was
totally grossed out by this, and I'm skeptical now appealed
garlic you find in jars in the stores. I'm only
using fresh garlic straight from a bulb from now on.
(47:27):
That did pop up in my feed like right after
we did this, the garlic episode. Yeah, I haven't seen it,
but definitely worth looking into. Yeah, and definitely someone on Instagram.
I don't think it was Gale Uh also recommended that episode,
So okay yeah. This other one is from another frequent writer, Jenny,
about our McDonald's episode. I studied first semester in Moscow
(47:48):
in n I was living in a dormitory on the
outskirts of town, and we only learned upon arrival that
there was no cafeteria. Instead, we had poorly equipped kitchen
on our floor, and we had to fend for selves,
which I guess led us to have the full experience
of living in Russia. The McDonald's near the Kremlin was
a forty minute metro ride away, and my classmates and
(48:09):
I would visit it at least once a week for
the meat. Seriously, none of us were really able to
cook meat. We had heard that McDonald's had set up
a big farm outside of Moscow to supply the McDonald's,
which was why the food there tasted so much more
delicious and fresh than the McDonald's at home. Whether it
really tasted better or whether homesickness tricked us into thinking, no,
I do not know. What I do know is that
(48:30):
this McDonald's had a very different vibe from the ones
in the US. First, it was huge, clean, and probably
had more than a dozen cashier stations. People showed up
there to eat in their finest clothes, and it was
really expensive. During the fall of inflation was crazy in Russia.
When I arrived in September, one U s Dollar was
equal to about one thousand rubles. When I left in December,
(48:52):
a dollar equalled around five thousand rubles. I took five
hundred dollars cash with me to Russia as spending money
for food, travel, incidentals, and even with the lack of
the cafeteria in my dormitory, I still left the country
with money and a suitcase full of souvenirs. If that
gives you an idea of the state of the economy.
If memory serves, a big mac was around one thousand rubles,
super cheap for me, but super expensive for the average Russian.
(49:16):
I have never really had an urge to return to Russia. However,
I still occasionally crave those specific burgers and milkshakes, and
also shout out to wren listeners senters in um photos
of the Hambord University mcdonald'son We're going to post them.
They're awesome. I'll have this amazing artwork that that's in there. Oh,
I can't wait so yeah, yeah, well we'll we'll figure
(49:38):
out where to probably Facebook maybe, yeah. Yes. So thanks
to Wren and Jenny and Gail and all the other
listeners who have sent us messages, and you can send
us a message to Our email is food Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. We're also on social media
like Facebook. On Facebook and Twitter, we are at food
stuff hsw over on Instagram, We're at stuff. We hope
(50:01):
to hear from you. Thank you so much to our
our sit in recorder Paul, also our producer Dylan Fagan,
and we hope lots of where good things are coming
your way
Hello, and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Anny Rees and
I'm Lauren fog Obam and you guys, we need we
need to talk about bananas. We really do. If you
ever needed an example of politics and how it's involved
in your food, this is it. It's this. This one's
really upsetting. I'm really upset about it. I'm not sure
if I'm ever going to eat bananas again. I'm like,
(00:30):
not exaggerate, but don't click away, don't. Yeah no, I
mean it's delightful. I mean it's wonderful. It's good to
be educated. It is. And a quick note right at
the top, Yeah, we are not talking about plantains. They
are members of the banana family, but they are different
and worthy of their own episodes. Oh absolutely, yes, So
let's let's embark on this journey. Yeah yeah, no, there's
there's also some really fun information there is so bananas,
(00:54):
what aren't they Well? According to Dan Copple, who is
the author of Banana, The Fate of the Fruit That
Changed the World, very helpful in this research, the banana
is quote one of the most intriguing organisms on Earth.
First of all, it's parent plant is an herb, but
the banana itself is a berry. Botanically speaking, when we
(01:15):
say that something is a is a botanical berry, we
mean that it's a fruit that does not have a
stone in it, that is made from a single flower.
The plants, the banana plants, aren't trees, although they're sometimes
called trees, they're they're basically huge tubes of leaf stalks.
New leaves sprout up out from the center, and as
they get larger, the leaves and start to flatten out
(01:36):
and droop the old ones, forming that the trunk kind
of wither and fall. The banana plant generally grows about
three meters or ten feet tall, and it doesn't have
a season for blooming the way that like apples do.
They can flower any time of year. The flowers don't
need to be fertilized. They are sterile. Yes. Over the
course of about nine months, they'll grow into a bunch
(01:58):
or hand of up to a hundred seventy bananas. Yeah
quite a lot. Yeah, but they'll only do it once,
only one time, one time, and that's it. After that,
you have to grow a new plant if you want
more bananas. And for this reason, the banana plant is
a symbol in Buddhism. Of the ultimate uselessness of earthly things,
or at least that's that's what I read in a
(02:19):
History of Food by Magolon to St. Sumat, who I
do not think is a Buddhist, and I had trouble
confirming it with more direct sources. But it's a nice story.
I guess it reminds me of the sport, the poetry
about the sport, and the ultimate uselessness of Huh, lots
of useless foods and objects we talked about on the show. Apparently, Yeah,
(02:41):
that's keep listening, everybody. Um, Bananas do not have working seeds.
You get a new banana plant by making a cutting
of a shoote and and planting that cutting. Bunches are
harvested by hand or generally by machete. More specifically, they're
shipped green and very carefully kept at temp chures and
humidities meant to prevent ripening until they are ready, like
(03:04):
ready to go to the market. Um. The ripening process
is then triggered by a bath of ethylene gas, which
is this compound produced by fruits as they ripen, and
can also trigger unripe fruits to start ripening, like avocado.
Like avocado, Uh huh, um and the temperature then is
also increased to about sixty to sixty two degrees fahrenheit
(03:27):
very precise, that's a fifteen point six to sixteen point
seven degrees celsius. This allows the fruit to begin to
yellow just as it hits store shelves. Perfect. Yes, I
love the specificity. I know. Bananas, by the way, are
the most popular fruit in the world and they account
for sevent of all tropical fruit trade. Yeah, but they
(03:51):
are also a staple food in many places that grow
them are actually grown to be consumed domestically. Yeah, which
is one of the most surprising things to me. Um.
And even though there are nearly a thousand types of bananas,
of bananas sold in the US are the yellow Cavendish banana,
and they account for over half of the bananas grown
(04:14):
around the world. And apparently it's kind of seen as
a lesser banana where bananas are more common more commonly
grown in India, it's looked down upon as the hotel banana.
Yeah for those fancy people. Yeah. Uh. In terms of nutrition,
bananas are a very calorie dense food because they are
(04:36):
so sugary, about fourteen fourteen grams of sugar a piece,
which is more than a quarter of a can of coke. Yeah. Um,
a uk Zoo banned them a few years back from
their Primates diets for fear of chunky monkeys. Lauren, that
was excellent. I'm sorry and or you're welcome, thank you.
(05:00):
And unharvested banana is about one percent fruit toose, but
by the time it gets to the grocery shells and
the searches convert to sugars, it's about eight percent. Yeah,
not too long after that our old pal fermentation kicks in.
In some African countries, this means banana wine or banana beer.
Bananas are also, however, high in potassium, invited and c
(05:21):
and contain good stuff like fiber and electro lights and antioxidants.
And I think we've talked about this before, either in
person or on the show. I can't remember, but diet
and exercise enthusiasts are so divided about bananas. Um. You know.
I if you're watching your sugar, a'd say to probably
avoid them, But otherwise they're a good way to quell
a craving for something sweet without turning to less healthy
(05:44):
processed snacks. Yes, and here's an important question, Lauren, are
you peeling your bananas rolling? Probably what Yeah, as the
Internet was eager to tell us a couple of years back,
it is much easier to peel a banana from the
side that doesn't have the stem on it, which is
how I've always done it, because really, oh no, no, no,
(06:04):
that the stems are Oh yeah, I don't know if
you if you hold up the other end, the nubby end,
and kind of pinch that nub between your thumb and
four finger, it'll just come away and simultaneously split the
banana's skin into sections. Oh so it's easy, and plus
at that point you can use the stem as a handle.
(06:25):
That's handy. Oh oh, I didn't even mean to. Apart
from being eaten as is in school lunches or at
the end of races, bananas are used for all kinds
of things. Banana bread, bana putting, banana's, faster's, banas split
and ice cream, banana pancakes. Man, I had this banana
curry in India that was so good, and I would
have never thought to have put banana and curry, but
(06:47):
oh no, I believe you. I want that now. Immigrants
riving to Ellis Island were once handed bananas. I know.
According to PBS, you can use a banana peel to
help loosen a splinter, get rid of ink stains, mitigate
insect bites, or stop a scratched disc from skipping. Celebrities
(07:07):
like Jay Leno and Ronald Reagan used to be members
of the International Banana Club, which have thirty eight thousands
do paying members from twenty seven country And when you joined,
you got the option to pick a banana themed nickname.
I want to know so much more, but there's no
time the whole other episode. Clearly, there's also a cryptocurrency,
(07:32):
you know, like bitcoin, the value of which is tied
to the value of a kilogram of bananas on the
international market. Of course there is. It's called banana coin.
How have I not heard banana coin? Well, okay, so
let's talk about currency economics. Um, banana's pack is serious punch.
(07:52):
Daniel Stone at National Geographic put it this way. If
fruits were pop stars, the banana would be Beyonce. They
are the fourth most monetarily valuable food in the world,
behind only wheat, rice and milk. Yeah. Shaqda, a company
name I'm guessing you recognize, is the largest producer of
(08:12):
bananas as often. The export of bananas made eight point
nine billion in commercial sales and u S dollars. If
you include non exports and plantains, that numbers forty four
point one billion dollars the largest. The two largest growers
of bananas, China and India, making up thirty five percent
of banana and plantain yields, don't export hardly any at all,
(08:36):
but consume them within their own borders. Ecuador is the
largest exporter of bananas, and seventeen million tons, most of
which are cavendish, are exported globally every year. They are
the single most purchased item at American walmarts. That is
stunning to me. I guess, I don't know what else? Bread?
(08:57):
I don't, I don't bread or milk? Yeah. Oh. One
place that you will not find bananas is on crab boats.
There is such a wide anti banana superstition that some
crabbing crews even prohibit banana boat sunscreen and Banana Republic clothing.
No one is entirely sure how this got started, Okay.
(09:21):
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reports that
four million people depend on bananas as their primary caloric provider.
In some African countries, people eat an average of five
hundred pounds of bananas a year near like Victoria. The
Swahili word for food might also translate to banana. They
are one of the most important crops for about ten countries.
(09:44):
A lot of people depend on the banana for their
livelihood or as a food source that keeps them alive.
That's what makes this next part so so extra scary. Yeah,
so we we need to talk about the upcoming banana apocalypse. Yeah,
we really do. You've probably seen not so great headlines
(10:04):
like these banana apocalypse the race to save the world's
most popular fruit from the Washington Post CNNs. Why bananas
as we know them right now going extinct again? Um?
Has the end of the banana arrived from popular science?
And what they're referring to is a fungus called Fusarium
wilt a k a. The Panama disease. And this stuff
(10:25):
is no joke. It attacks the roots of banana plants
and the spores can survive for decades in the ground,
meaning it can stick to boots or anything else that
comes in contact with infected soil and easily spread that way.
The incubation period is two to three years too, so
you might not even know you've got a problem until
(10:45):
it's too late. The first strain, Race one, as it
was called, pretty much wiped out the grown Michelle a k.
A big mic type of banana, which until nive was
the most exported type of banana. There was even a
song of about this called yes we have no Bananas.
It's very up beat um penned in nineteen three. The
(11:06):
less flavorful, I guess I've never tried one. Uh no,
I have tried a Cavendish. I have never tried to
grow Michelle. The Cavendish is said to be less flavorful
than big Mike grow Michelle due to its resistance to
raise one. It's not less flavorful because well, we don't know. Yeah, yeah,
it replaced it because it was yeah, immune to that
(11:30):
version of the strain strain. But Caven dish banas are
not immune to the current strain of Panama disease Race four.
Race four was first isolated in Malaysia in nine nine.
Over ten thousand hectares of Cavendish bananas have been destroyed,
particularly in Australia and Southeast Asia because of this. Africa
(11:51):
in the Middle East saw the first cases of it
in and researchers believe Latin America, where most exported banas
are grown, is next. There's no cure for it, and
it's very difficult to isolate. Cavendish bananas aren't the only
variety at risk either. Race four could take out up
to eight of banana and planting prediction. If y'all have
(12:15):
ever played the board game Pandemic, yeah, the contagion map
for Race four kind of looks like that. It's specifically,
it looks like everyone is having a really bad time
playing it. Does it looks like? I love this game.
By the way, if you haven't played it, get it.
It looks like, right when you draw the you're already
in a bad spot and you draw the epidemic card. Oh,
(12:37):
and you're like, oh no, oh, it's over um. And
part of the problem here is that most domesticated bananas,
because of the way they're reproduced, are clones, meaning they're
all susceptible to the same things. Yeah, yeah, and that
that's why that's why any two bananas look so remarkably
alike and taste so remarkably like one of the articles
(12:58):
I was reading, and I wish I could remember which
one it was to give the writer proper credit related
them to like McDonald's Hamburger's, Yeah, the Big Mac. Yeah,
I saw that too. Um. In scientists planted genetically modified
Cavendish bananas in a place called Humpty Dew in Australia's
Northern Territory. Yeah, Australia. Yeah, others are trying to cross
breed to make a hybrid, but the Cavendish is pretty
(13:20):
much sterile, so it makes things difficult. And there are
other projects out there to promote alternate banana types that
might be more resistant. The aforementioned banana coin is actually
a crowdfunding project to develop the Lady Finger variety in
Laos for sale in China. But it's hard to get
alternatives going because caven Dish bananas are so mass produced
(13:42):
and so cheap. Yeah, so there's that. Yeah, how did
we get here? How did we get to a world
that's we got one single type of banana for most everybody.
That's what you know, um, and it's in danger. We'll
talk about it and more politics than we ever imagine.
After a quick break for a word from our sponsor,
(14:12):
and we're back, Thank you. Sponsored bananas are one of
the first foodstuffs we humans cultivated. If we want to
go way wait, wait, wait, way back. Some scholars think
that it was a banana not an apple that Eve
accepted in the Garden of Eden. Has to do with
the height of human and the banana leaves being the
right size to cover her general and other things. But
(14:35):
that was the two I remember it. They were probably
first grown in Southeast Asia, possibly more for the practical
uses of the peels and the leaves. Recent archaeological evidence
discovered in Pepal New Guinea dates the oldest known banana
to five thousand BC, and perhaps even further back than that.
(14:56):
The first written mentioned of the fruit is from India
in five BC, and we can infer from these records
that bananas were grown similarly at the time as we
grow them today by cloning well um. We can also
infer that bananas might have been around in India as
far back as three thousand BC. When Alexander the Great
(15:18):
returned to Europe from India in three seven b C,
he brought with him bananas. That might be why when
our old pal Plenty the Elder wrote about them in
fifty C he said they were most likely native to
India between sixty three to fourteen BC. Roman Emperor Octavius
(15:39):
Augustus's personal physician and Tonius Musa was a vocal supporter
for growing bananas. Yes, they're in that genus. That's that's
the Yeah, that's the genus of of banana. Bananas were
brought to Africa and six d fifty c e by
Middle Eastern traders and armies. Probably there's some dispute about
(16:00):
this um. It is christened banan uh derivation of the
Arabic word for finger. Is around this time that banana
got swept up in the growing slave trade between northern
and Central Africa and Arab nations. After all, they are
a calorie dense food, which makes them a really good staple. Yeah,
but that was all by land, and bananas do not
(16:22):
travel well. Skip ahead to the fifteen hundreds and Spain
and Portugal are well oiled machines of exploration and exploitation.
They had found water roots to India, China and the Americas.
And although these water roots didn't speed trade enough to
get like a fresh African banana into Lisbon in a
timely manner, they were introducing staple and cash crops into
(16:46):
all of these new territories as they colonized. Their efforts
with bananas in the America's, starting with the Canary Islands
in the early fourteen hundreds, were so successful that some
contemporary travelers and explorers claimed that the fruit was native. Wow.
Did did spread thus throughout the Middle and South America
and the Caribbean? Yes, and including to England. I suppose
(17:08):
because in eighteen thirty four, the sixth Duke of Devonshire,
William Cavendish, got a shipment of a certain banana he
really liked. Yeah, it was the one that would become
known as the Cavendish. He had his gardener start to
cultivate them in their greenhouses. Along comes businessman Henry Meg's
in eighty nine, moving from the east coast of the
(17:30):
US to San Francisco to get on get in on
that gold rush action. He had an idea to build
a huge canning complex and a duck, which he did. However,
he didn't pay any of his investors back, which, as
you can imagine, annoyed them a little bit. He was
chased out of the country, eventually ending up in Chile.
(17:52):
Oh And that canning and duck complex, by the way,
was later renamed from Meg's Wharf to Fisherman's Wharf in
Safe for Disco. Wait what, yes, that's one of my
favorite kind of unrelated facts of the episode bananas. Okay,
all right, Yeah, Meg's eventually ended up in Chile, as
I said, and he built the country's first railroad. Then
he moved to Peru and put down twelve hundred miles
(18:15):
or about n kiometers of track and this made him
quite wealthy and sort of like a monarch in the
country under his new name Don and he also had
a nephew. This nephew, minor Copper Keith gets a job
with his uncle developing a railroad in Costa Rica. The
conditions were terrible and over five thousand of his workers
(18:37):
died and it would take twenty years to complete and
it was a total failure of a passenger train once
it was completed. But back near at the beginning of
the project, Keith had started planting bananas in cleared areas
around the tracks, which he sold for cheap to his workers.
And once the track was complete, he had this quick
way to get those bananas from these farms inland out
(18:58):
to the ports uh the edges of the island for
shipment to America, so he started doing that. Meanwhile, in
eighteen seventy one, Captain Lorenzo dow Baker started the first
American banana craze when he brought a hundred and sixty
bunches of gro Michelle bananas from Jamaica to Jersey City
(19:18):
and sold them for two bucks per bunch. I looked
it up, that's like thirty five bucks in today's money. Uh.
They were a pop fad and considered a delicacy. Americans
get their first wide scale exposure to the banana at
Philadelphia's eighteen seventy six World's Fair, and starting in the
eighteen eighties, banana recipes started proliferating in American cookbooks, both
(19:42):
banana and banana flavorings and including banana pudding. I went
on a nice rabbit hold about that. It appeared in
this eight seven joke go Mazers sitting at a table.
One of them says, this banana pudding is exquisite. It
tastes just like strawberries. And then the other one says,
and this strawberry shortcake is superb. One would think it
(20:04):
was made of bananas. It's a real Nie slapper. However,
refined victorians might be too ruffled by the suggestive shape
to purchase a banana, causing some merchants to wrap up
banana slices and foil and sell it that way. Amidst
all of this popularity, Captain Baker and a few entrepreneurs
(20:25):
got the idea to capitalize on banana banana madness, and
so he teamed up with one Andrew Preston to form
the Boston Fruit Company in eighty five. They were importers
of exotic tropical fruits in a Russian immigrant named Samuel's
and Murray actually changed the name to that but um
(20:47):
he moved to Alabama, where he saw his first banana.
He noticed that the Boston Fruit Company was tossing loads
of them out at the time because of how long
it took to move things places. The rule was a
banana with one freckle was turning and could be okay,
but two freckles, no, it was ripe, and it never
(21:07):
survived the trip to the store. But the Murray had
an idea on a way to sell these right bananas
destined for garbage. What he did was he bought all
of them up. He runned some space on the Illinois
Central Rail Railroad train, loaded it up with his banana purchase,
and he used the train telegrapher and conductor to get
(21:27):
a message to grocery store owners who wouldn't meet the train. Yeah,
and by some of the bananas. He was working against
the clock, selling right bananas out of a slow moving train.
This wasn't his last foray into the banana business. Oh,
will be coming back to him. Yeah. In in part
(21:49):
due to the influence of the banana companies, the American
military intervenes in Nicaragua to prevent land and labor reforms,
and this is the first of over thirty instances. Some
will discuss further. The U. S. Government would step in
to situations that might have impacted the banana companies, sometimes
(22:11):
at the behest of the banana companies. Yep, yeah um
up until most bananas were found in fancy hotels and
came with peeling instructions. An article covering that very topic,
how to peel Banana, appeared in Scientific American that same year.
(22:31):
Here's how they told you to do it. The fruit
is peeled by slitting the skin longitudinally and giving it
a rotary motion with the hands. The peel having been
thus detached. The fruit is cut into thin transverse slices,
which are dried in the sun or in a furnace.
It's very complicated. I don't I'm still trying to figure
(22:52):
out it's I think it's a twisted I don't know.
We're making a lot of hand gestures that aren't working.
Bananas started puffing up in all the cities all over
North America and Europe, allegedly thinks in part to a
man some call the French Johnny apple Seed Nicola Baldin,
who planted banana stems on the Caribbean islands. A year later,
(23:15):
in nineteen hundred, Americans devoured over a million banana bunches.
Also in eighteen nine, though, these three Sicilian brothers in
New Orleans, the Vaccaros brothers, began importing bananas into New Orleans,
starting a competing business to these already existing ones. And meanwhile,
(23:37):
Minor Keith's Costa Rican banana business was succeeding, but his
investment business took a huge hit when his bank filed
for bankruptcy. He loses one point five million dollars overnight,
so he arranges a merger with his biggest competitors, the
Boston Fruit Company. So in eighteen ninety nine they form
the United Fruit Company and immediately begin acquiring other growers
(24:01):
and distributors. Their transportation was so quick and reliable that
in nineteen o one, the government of Guatemala hired them
to run the National Post Service, and just three years later,
Guatemala contracted the company to construct and maintain the nation's
main rail line for years. Wow. It was a dictator
in Guatemala at the time. And I feel like there's
probably bribery involved. Yeah, probably, uh yeah. So, so they
(24:26):
were building the the this United Fruit Company out of
the Boston Fruit Company, and Minor Keith had this this,
this land, these railways, these ships, these bananas, and these
amazing profits. Yeah. I feel like the United Fruit Companies
just the shadow that hangs over this entire episode. Yeah,
oh um. Somewhere around and here. They also create a
(24:47):
subsidiary called the Fruit Dispatch Company for transportation, research and development,
and also marketing. I'm having trouble tracking down an exact
an exact date, but it definitely happened. And to transport
their banana as they used the United Fruit Company steamship service.
These boats were painted white to reflect the sun and
helped the fruit last longer, mostly bananas um so they
(25:10):
also went by the Great White Fleet and also banana boats.
Panama Disease Race one first shows up in you guessed it, Panama,
in n it In only five years, it decimated the
entire banana crop in Surinam. Wherever the disease struck, United
(25:30):
Fruit picked up and moved somewhere else in Latin America.
But everywhere they went, the disease seemed to follow, like
no matter how many incredibly toxic pesticides they spread, which
they definitely did. Uh. But beyond this mysterious banana disease,
they also brought with them local disaster. Mindful of profits
over propriety, they were in a business of bullying. They
(25:52):
would they would buy up land, tear down the natural
habitat to build plantations, essentially forced the people who lived
there into these low wage, indentured service tunes, and suppress
any labor movements that would come up, violently if necessary.
Latin Americans would come to refer to this company as
El Popo, the octopus. Octopus. Yeah, okay, so that brings
(26:18):
us to United Fruit, big player in this um. We're
gonna be talking more about how they impacted bananas and politics.
But first, but first, we're going to take a quick
breather for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
(26:42):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay. This brings us
to the term banana republic. Yes, it's not just an
overpriced clothing brand. No, it's nut uh. It refers to
the power in this context banana producers wielded in the
tree and it was coined in nineteen o four by O.
Henry and his novel Cabbages and Kings. On a lighter note,
(27:06):
this is also when the banana split was invented, in
the middle of all of that amazing Victorian ice cream
counterculture exactly. Um, this is where it was invented in Pennsylvania. Anyway,
people like to fight about who the real creator is
and what a real banana split is. Do you know
how people are? Um? And remember the murray Our industrious
train banana salesman. In nineteen ten, he purchased five thousand
(27:31):
acres of land in Honduras for banana plantations. It's like catch. Though,
after he'd already made his purchase, he finds out the
president of Honduras isn't on board with the concessions he
was counting on, mostly around taxes, land and transportation. Oh so,
so what do you do? Do you pack up and
move to another country? No, you organize a military coup?
(27:54):
Oh right, obviously, um, two dudes Lee Christmas and machine
Gun Muloney snuck past US agents on a single small
ship with a single box of arms, and in a
few weeks after their arrival, the government collapses. What Zumurray
gets everything he asked for from the newly installed president
(28:17):
and the HUBBERB. Zumurray company sets up shop in the country.
That same year, Costa Rica opened the first lab studying
banana genetics. Instead of focusing on coming up with better bananas, though,
they instead decided to go the pesticide fungicide chemical route
to keep bananas nice and cold on ships. The Vaccaros's
(28:39):
company purchases most of the ice factories in New Orleans
in nineteen earning brother Joseph the nickname Ice King long
before adventure time. A year later, the Great White Fleet
was dry docked for a short period after super fascinating
historical dude Count Felix von Luckner sunk some of its ships.
Huh uh more about Oh, Now I want to know
(29:02):
about him? Oh, I had to look him up. It
was very interesting anyway. In nineteen twelve, the US government
steps in to stop a rebellion against the Honduran government,
allegedly to protect American banana workers. In nineteen fifteen, the U. S.
Army invades Haiti, then the Dominican Republic in nineteen sixteen,
and Cuba in nineteen seventeen, where they stayed till nineteen
(29:25):
thirty three, Panama in nineteen eighteen, Honduras in nineteen nineteen
for the presidential elections, and Guatemala in nineteen twenty and
a two week skirmish with Unionist in nineteen twenty five,
the U. S. Army intervened in the elections in Honduras
and in the striking in Panama, respectively. H Yeah in
(29:46):
nineteen twenty four. That was the same year that United
Fruit hired doctors too, endorsed mashed bananas as baby food,
and Dr Sydney Hass publicly advocated bananas as a curative
for children with Ciliak disease. They also launched what they
called the Home Economics Department, with the goal of familiarizing
(30:08):
housewives with the fruit and getting images of bananas and textbooks. Yeah,
they provided schools with a lot of free textbooks that
dedicated a lot to the banana, over fifteen million pieces
of literature around the world by a campaign that included
coupons for bananas on cereal boxes put banana in the
(30:28):
breakfast category, especially as a cereal topping for the first time.
And this was the first instance of a coupon coming
packaged with another product. A couple of years later, United
Fruits debuted dried banana chips and Panama disease spread to
New Zealand, Australia, China, India and the Canary Islands. Yeah,
(30:53):
crackdown by United Fruit on striking workers in Colombia was
the inspiration behind the Banana Company and its massacre in
the novel One hundred Years of Solitude. United Fruit funded
US trained vigilanti squads that turned their machine guns on
a crowd protesting crowd to end the strike. The incident
(31:14):
was covered up and to this day we're not sure
how many people died, and estimate from United Fruits pose
its about one thousand, but you know they're probably low balling.
To this day, the skirmishes between the right wing leftovers
of those squads and left wing gangs that Columbia. Columbia
is still dealing with that and the Justice Department revealed
(31:37):
in two thousand seven that Chaquida had spent more than
one point seven million dollars funding the right wing terrorist
group a u C in Columbia under the guise of
security between ninet and two thousand four, and the AUC
handles a large part of Columbia's cocaine exports. Shaquita was
fine twenty five million dollars. Jakida is the brand name
(32:02):
that United Fruit would become later on. Also in the twenties,
United Fruit launched a marketing campaign slash tour service on
their banana boats. Um. These these luxury cruise compartments and
tours of very carefully staged plantation scenery. Yeah, um and
the these crews luxury cruises. Um one one of the
(32:25):
big pushes that led tourism in these countries. And the
slogan of their cruise line was where the pirates hid
their gold. Yeah, I don't know about that, hu uh.
And and it was it was all just incredibly profitable.
By the late nineteen twenties, United Fruit. United Fruit had
sixty seven thousand workers in thirty two countries and one
(32:48):
point six million acres of land. They were worth over
a hundred million dollars, and in nineteen nine they bought
Zamuri out in exchange for over thirty one million dollars
in United Fruit stocks, making him the biggest shareholder. By
nineteen thirty, the ripening room that we discussed earlier in
the show had been developed to help with product quality control.
(33:13):
Banana workers go on strike and hunters In nineteen thirty two,
the strikers are fired and the leader of the movement
is assassinated. The US intervened in El Salvador later that
year as well. In nineteen forty four, the Chiquita brand
name debuts and uh they were writing off the popularity
of Carmen Miranda's banana dances. The Chakeda Banana slogan came
(33:35):
out the following year in a movie called Mr. Chakeda
Banana's Beauty Treatment. As the first time you heard the slogan,
um the whole thing the subjectifying of Latina women is
I don't have to tell you, but it's quite problematic,
and we did a whole episode on it for stuff
Mom never told you if you would like to look
it up. Pablo Naruda's nineteen fifty book of fifty poems,
(33:56):
Conto General, had a whole chapter about United for and
the devastation they caused. Um and here's a little, a
little piece, a little taste. The United Fruit Company reserved
for itself the most juicy place, the central coast of
my world, the delicate waste of America. It re baptized
(34:17):
these countries, banana republics, and over the sleeping dead, over
the unquiet heroes who won greatness, liberty, and banners. It
abolished free will, gave out imperial crowns, encouraged in the attracted,
the dictatorship of flies, flies sticky with with submissive blood
and marmalade, drunken flies that buzz over the tombs of
(34:41):
the people, circus flies, wise flies, expert at tyranny, A
corpse rolls, a thing without a name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit thrown on the garbage heat.
Oh yeah, I mean I love Bablo Naruta um well
Za Murray, the Banana Man, as he's sometimes known, retired
(35:04):
in nineteen fifty one. That same year, Guatemala becomes the
first Central American country to democratically elected leader Kobo A. Benz.
United Fruit is not a fan. His campaign included banana
workers rights, and they start looking for a way to
quote solve the problem he presents. Their solution was propelled
(35:27):
by purportedly retired Zumurray, who backed the publication of Report
on Guatemala, a book that claimed our Benz was quote
under Moscow's control. Yeah. This was, you know, Cold War,
during the height of the anti communism. Yes, every member
of Congress received a copy. And now they see a
quote crisis that threatens US interest. President Truman okays the
(35:51):
CIA to act in Guatemala. The US backs Colonel Carlos
Cristillo and the Liberation War against Communism, as from ponents
called it. Costillo used US bases in Nicaragua to force
our Bands into exile and dropped the legal actions he'd
been supporting against United Fruit. The whole thing influenced Ernesto
(36:13):
Guevara LH to believe revolutions in Latin America would only
succeed through violence. Costillo's US recognized government set up a
National Committee of Defense against Communism Communism to weed out
any remaining Our Bonds supporters. Oh, this was called Operations Success.
(36:33):
Two hundred thousand Guatemalans died. Okay um In We see
the first commercial Cavendish bananas introduced by Standard Fruit a
decade later. They were pretty much the norm because they
were more delicate than their predecessor gro Michelle. New best
practices when it came to handling and boxing were implemented,
(36:57):
and this led to marketing innovations like stickers on each
banana and waste to track bananas that eventually led to
the barcodes we used today. Yeah, a lot of the
banana shipping industry has turned into market like, like supermarket wide.
Harry Bellefonte's recording of the banana boat Songdo premiered in
(37:17):
nineteen fifty five. It was a traditional Jamaican call and
response song. So I've been around a while about banana
workers and you know, wanting to go home. But as
Foster was invented at Brennan's in New Orleans in ninety one.
In nineteen sixty, Shaquita opens a banana research center in Honduras,
helmed by Phil Roe. Roe would go on to become
(37:40):
the most prolific breeder of new banana species. Um. He
was a big advocate for it, including the hybrid Goldfinger.
After Fidel Castro took control of Cuban banana plantations, the
banana companies allowed the CIA's use of their freighters and
the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion. Yeah. Meanwhile, the Vacaro
(38:03):
Brothers company was still kicking around. It had started operating
under the name Standard Fruit a little bit earlier in
the century, and in nineteen sixty four it did some
further rebranding, changing the company name two Doll that Do
whatever doll would be. In nineteen sixty seven, Shaqda printed
over ninety thousand recipe cards for the previously unheard of
(38:27):
banana and Peter butter sandwiches before nineteen okay yeah. Perhaps
in part due to this, global banana consumption reached four
billion pounds in nineteen and after taking over as chairman
of United Fruit in the nineteen seventies, Eli and Black
realized that the banana was not as big of a
moneymaker as he believed it to be. United Fruit had
(38:51):
spun up a lot of debt, and when Hurricane Fifi
hit in nineteen seventy four, um taking out significant chunk
of United Fruits. Honduran banana farms. Black sold the business. However,
the Securities and Exchange Commission the SEC in the US
wasn't done with him yet. A year later, they produced
(39:11):
evidence of an attempted two point five million dollar bribe
Black offered the President of Honduras to lower taxes on
banana X. After the accusation surfaced, Black killed himself by
jumping out of his office, which was located on the
forty three or fourth floor um United Fruit pleaded guilty
(39:35):
to bribery and night and pays a fourteen thousand dollar fine,
only only fourteen thousand sure. In the nineteen eighties, the
banana industry planted Cavendish bananas in Malaysia, which may have
inadvertently um been a huge favor to Panama disease raes
for Malaysia's where the disease originated. In this Belgian research
(40:01):
organization bio Diversity International, began collecting and distributing banana germ
cells from various species and then they would form the
Mussa Germ Plasm Transit Center in seven. The organization is
still around and now has a collection of more than
fifteen hundred species of banana in like growth viable samples
(40:24):
in the nineties, United Fruit attempt to kind of clean
up its image by rebranding as Chakida Brands International, and
they also used significant political contributions to influence to influence
international trade policies. Some European governments were placing these really
heavy tariffs on bananas from the Americas to help keep
plantations and trade in their own former colonies in Africa
(40:46):
and the East afloat, you know, where more of their
own influential citizens had financial interests. Time magazine later reported
that the CEO of Chikida dispensed so much cash to
politicians here in America that the Anton administration was ready
to mount a global trade war on his behalf. This
wouldn't be resolved until two thousand one, and Takeda would
(41:08):
sue the EU over these tariffs. More investigation by the
press would lead to a n Cincinnati inquire expose on
Hikida's use of worker rights, repression, harmful pesticides, bribery, and
all kinds of nasty political dealings in Honduras and Columbia.
The company would never challenge the facts, but this still
(41:31):
causes a huge mess that the company's shareholders sued the
company for losses the company sues the newspaper for maybe
illegally obtaining answering machine tapes. The court forces the paper
to fire the reporters and apologize. Yeah, they had to
fire the reporters. Phil Roe, the guy we mentioned earlier
(41:52):
who invented the gold finger banana and Honduras, hung himself
in his banana fields in two thousand one. Um. In
two thousand three, a genetic research lab focused on bananas
opened in Uganda, looking to build a better banana genetically speaking.
And in two thousand seven, doll was sued by a
workers rights group and wound up paying out two point
(42:13):
five million dollars. Yes, and they are now suing the
makers of the documentary called Bananas for defamation. Yes, and
Chiquita allegedly has a secret lab where they won't tell
anybody that they're working on what. Yeah, so supposedly there's
oh goodness, I forget where it's supposed to be, but yeah,
(42:36):
Costa Rica maybe yeah, I think so. Yeah, anyway, it's
maybe it's Jurassic Park. I don't know, Drassic Park of bananas. Okay,
well that is so, yeah, there we go. Hey, Hey
we get hey, we got through that. We did and um,
it's a lot we have to edit out a lot. Um,
(42:57):
but hopefully that gives you kind of a good over
view of banana history, of the banana history and uh,
you know, kind of leading into where it is today.
I I I don't believe from what I've read that
conditions have necessarily improved. No, but hopefully, um, knowing is
(43:20):
at least half part of the battles. And hey, you
can make a really good uh quick quick bread, fruit
based quick bread from ripe pears. Yeah, yeah, yeah you can. Yeah,
you didn't know more banana bread. It's fine. Yeah, and
that's well, we got to do the research on pairs.
Oh no, but I have a beat thing to end on. Um.
(43:42):
So I was curious about some banana sayings and banana humor,
the first being that's bananas and the context meaning crazy. Okay.
So in alban J. Pollock published The Underworld Speaks, which
was the book meant to help the FBI agents pick
out gangsters by their speech patterns. Where a choice saw
(44:04):
that jazz It includes this definition for its bananas. He's
sexually perverted a degenerate HM. Historians think this might be
because of the bent shape of bananas and bent itself
was slang for illegal or stolen at the time. This
slang definition meaning crazy seems to have been coined in
(44:24):
the sixties, but really took off in the seventies. This
could either be a reference to banana oil, which was
a slang term for the from the nine meaning nonsense
or persuasive talk like snake oil, or it may have
been a take on go ape um. It also could
have been from British soldiers slang out of the early
nineteen hundreds, meaning spoiled or rotten. Yeah, top banana meaning
(44:51):
the leader of an organization, our group um. This phrase
originated in the early nineteen hundreds and applied specifically to comedians.
Legend has it that it's a reference to burlesque comedian
Frank Lebowitz, whose show included handing out a banana to
the leading performer after a punchline. This act was so
well known by the nineteen fifties the term took on
(45:12):
the more general meaning and spawned second banana meaning supporting
actor are comedian, which is a great segue into our
next bit, banana humor. Banana bananas are I mean aside
from all of the literal facts about them, intrinsically hilarious. Yes,
they're the source of a lot of jokes and um,
(45:32):
a lot of cursing on my end while playing Mario
Kart sixty four. The first instance of some poor sods
flipping on a banana peal that we know of is
in the nineteen seventeen silent film The Flirt for Maximum Polarity.
It was a waiter carrying a tray of food and
he got fired immediately. Yeah, Sesame Streets banana phone debut
in nineteen sixty nine. A banana stuck in the tailpipe
(45:56):
of a police car was a joke in n Beverly
Hills the banana stand from the rest of development, there's
always money in the banana stand, and I'm a banana
came out and two that's and nine. I'm not going
to explain it, but to those of you that know
what I'm talking about, there you go. I didn't know
what it was, but it was included, and I looked
it up and I'm like, why is this a thing? Nonetheless,
(46:20):
it is a thing. I'll have to look it up
myself later or don't. Okay, perfect that is our banana episode.
Finally requested, I hope that UM, I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah,
I hope, I hope it. I hope it taught you
many things about America, imperialism, and industry, which actually is
(46:47):
a great segue into our first Listener mail. Frequent writer
Gail sent does this note about garlic. I watched an
episode and a new Netflix documentary series called Rotten. This
particular episode that I watched was about garlic and how
in China some companies force prisoners to do nothing but
peel garlic for long hours every single day. Some of
(47:07):
the prisoners had lost their fingernails. I didn't quite understand
that it had something to do with how they hand
peeled the garlic without any protective equipment like gloves, etcetera.
And they would peel garlic with their teeth. I was
totally grossed out by this, and I'm skeptical now appealed
garlic you find in jars in the stores. I'm only
using fresh garlic straight from a bulb from now on.
(47:27):
That did pop up in my feed like right after
we did this, the garlic episode. Yeah, I haven't seen it,
but definitely worth looking into. Yeah, and definitely someone on Instagram.
I don't think it was Gale Uh also recommended that episode,
So okay yeah. This other one is from another frequent writer, Jenny,
about our McDonald's episode. I studied first semester in Moscow
(47:48):
in n I was living in a dormitory on the
outskirts of town, and we only learned upon arrival that
there was no cafeteria. Instead, we had poorly equipped kitchen
on our floor, and we had to fend for selves,
which I guess led us to have the full experience
of living in Russia. The McDonald's near the Kremlin was
a forty minute metro ride away, and my classmates and
(48:09):
I would visit it at least once a week for
the meat. Seriously, none of us were really able to
cook meat. We had heard that McDonald's had set up
a big farm outside of Moscow to supply the McDonald's,
which was why the food there tasted so much more
delicious and fresh than the McDonald's at home. Whether it
really tasted better or whether homesickness tricked us into thinking, no,
I do not know. What I do know is that
(48:30):
this McDonald's had a very different vibe from the ones
in the US. First, it was huge, clean, and probably
had more than a dozen cashier stations. People showed up
there to eat in their finest clothes, and it was
really expensive. During the fall of inflation was crazy in Russia.
When I arrived in September, one U s Dollar was
equal to about one thousand rubles. When I left in December,
(48:52):
a dollar equalled around five thousand rubles. I took five
hundred dollars cash with me to Russia as spending money
for food, travel, incidentals, and even with the lack of
the cafeteria in my dormitory, I still left the country
with money and a suitcase full of souvenirs. If that
gives you an idea of the state of the economy.
If memory serves, a big mac was around one thousand rubles,
super cheap for me, but super expensive for the average Russian.
(49:16):
I have never really had an urge to return to Russia. However,
I still occasionally crave those specific burgers and milkshakes, and
also shout out to wren listeners senters in um photos
of the Hambord University mcdonald'son We're going to post them.
They're awesome. I'll have this amazing artwork that that's in there. Oh,
I can't wait so yeah, yeah, well we'll we'll figure
(49:38):
out where to probably Facebook maybe, yeah. Yes. So thanks
to Wren and Jenny and Gail and all the other
listeners who have sent us messages, and you can send
us a message to Our email is food Stuff at
how stuff works dot com. We're also on social media
like Facebook. On Facebook and Twitter, we are at food
stuff hsw over on Instagram, We're at stuff. We hope
(50:01):
to hear from you. Thank you so much to our
our sit in recorder Paul, also our producer Dylan Fagan,
and we hope lots of where good things are coming
your way
Savor News
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Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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