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 Banana, Pisang.
Musa acuminata Colla;
Musa balbisiana Colla; Musa x paradisiaca L.
Family of Musaceae.
Description
& storage
Long
thick-skinned edible fruit that is yellow when ripe.
Keep
bananas on a fruit dish in the living room at room temperature. If you
want the bananas to ripen faster place the bowl in the sun. Like other
tropical fruits and tomatoes and bell peppers, never store bananas in
the refrigerator. Below 8 degrees
Celsius the fruit will decay from the inside. These fruits will not
ripen but
will turn black in the refrigerator.
Plant
Banana-plants can grow
up to
15 m. but most plants vary from 3 to 9 m.
It has very big leafs
that
can grow to 4 x 1 m.
Short history
Wild forms of the
banana plant
come originally from the Indo-Malaysian area and are now cultivated all
over
the tropical and sub-tropical continents.
Use
Bananas are delicious
eaten
with one's fingers after peeling off the skin. Depending on the type of
banana unripe bananas are also cooked, fried or deep-fried a lot.
Bananas
are the basic food in many tropical countries.
Types
At
this
moment there are five different types of bananas common on the market:
Red bananas:
have
a green/red peel and pink fruit flesh. They taste the same like yellow
bananas.
The redder a fruit, the more carotene it contains, so maybe they are
healthier
than their yellow colleagues;
Fruit-bananas:
are the normal, yellow bananas, 15-30 cm.
Apple-bananas:
are smaller, 8-10 cm., and ripen faster. They are also yellow;
The
baby-banana
(pisang susa): is yellow as well and measures 6-8 cm. It is the
sweetest
of the banana family;
Baking
bananas: are 30 to 40 cm. large and are green, yellow or red-like.
They
cannot be eaten raw. They fulfill the role of the potato in the
tropical
countries.
Peculiar
characteristics
Is the most
well known and eaten (tropical) fruit;
In
Eastern
Africa you can buy banana beer. This beer is brewed from bananas;
Tropical
fruit is usually picked unripe and has to ripen in the land of arrival.
To make this process go faster bananas are treated with ethylene-gas.
Normal
bananas also ripen through ethylene -gas but exposing it to additional
gas accelerates the process;
Is
the (only)
fruit that for some people can work fatting because they
contain
a lot of starch (more starch than sugar). Those people shouldn't eat
too
many bananas a day;
Eat
at least
one banana a day, they are said to contain everything a human needs and
they contain all the 8 amino-acids our body cannot
produce itself. For more see the
energy in fruit.
Bananas
are a good source of fiber, potassium and vitamin C;
Red
bananas
are often dried and converted to meal which is used in many ways;
Red
bananas
contain more vitamin C as yellow bananas (the redder a fruit, the more
nutritious elements it contains);
Nutrition
Facts
Selection
Recipes
Acidity
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