Ripe bananas for Consumption

Bananas for Consumption
Bananas are ripe when they are solid yellow without any green and are overripe once they develop large brown spot. Unripe bananas contain enzyme inhibitors and are therefore constipating and difficult to digest, whereas ripe bananas do not have the inhibitors and are considered laxative.

Avoid commercial bananas, which are picked unripe and then treated with ethylene gas to hasten ripening during shipment; instead purchase organic bananas and place them in a paper bag to encourage natural ripening. To preserve bananas at the peak of ripeness, store them in the refrigerator, which will turn the skin brown but not adversely affect the flavor, or keep them in the dark, plastic bag sealed with a twist tie.

Use bananas in pudding, pies, fruit salads and smoothies. Bananas blended with water make nourishing banana milk. Snack on them fresh, or try a sandwich of banana and raw almond butter. Freeze peeled bananas and run them through a juicer to make dairy-free “ice cream.” Dried banana chips make a tasty, sweet treat.

People who exceedingly cold, frail, or lethargic should only consume bananas in moderation, as eating them may exacerbate those conditions.
Ripe bananas for Consumption

Healthy Fruit: Banana

Healthy Fruit: Banana
Bananas are considered cold and have a tendency to move energy inward in the body. They are sweet, being rich in carbohydrates (mostly the sugars glucose and fructose), as well as in folic acid, vitamins B6, and C, potassium, and pectin. They also contain an enzyme that aids in the production of sex hormones. As bananas are high in calories but low in fat, they are an excellent food for pregnant mothers, babies and children.

Bananas provide long term energy and improve stamina. They moisten the ‘yin’ fluid of the body, including the lungs and large intestines, and have some antiseptic activity. They support the friendly intestinal flora (helpful bacteria within our bowel) and stimulate the proliferation of cells that provide a protective coating between the stomach and harsh digestive acids. Bananas also stimulate the production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that improve sleep and elevate mood.

Bananas have been used to treat alcoholism, arteriosclerosis, celiac disease, colitis, constipation, depression, diarrhea, dyspepsia, exhaustion, hemorrhoids, hypertension, weak muscle and ulcers. They also have been used to help treat insulin shock in diabetics. Ripe bananas are very easy to digest – even easier when mashed – and are recommended for those suffering from weak digestion, vomiting or emaciation.
Healthy Fruit: Banana

Banana in Malaysia

Banana in Malaysia
In Malaysia, bananas are being commercialized for export. Cavendish is being planted on a few sites, in dense stands allowing pathogens and pests present in this region of coevolution to reveal their epidemic for the fist time. These are as a rotation crop after old palm oil. The plantations are severely affected by Fusarium wilt. The plantations were established with no concern for this disease.

In Malaysia, banana is the second most widely cultivated fruit, covering about 26,000 ha with a total production of 530,000 metric tones. About 50% of the banana growing land is cultivated with Pisang Berangan and the Cavendish type.

However, banana production in Malaysia has decreased because of an increasing threat of diseases (particularly Fusarium wilt), high labor costs and marketing issues. However, it is still popular grown and contributes about 16% of the total fruit production areas.

Banana cultivation is largely a smallholder enterprise where farms are small, unorganized and farmers often adopt inferior technology. Apparently, this production practice often results in low yield and inferior quality.

Poor quality has been a major constraint to export of fresh fruits, including banana. It is therefore necessary to adopt good production practices and inefficient postharvest handling to ensure consistent supply of high quality banana for export.

There is also little research on banana. Local agriculture at the village level provided all the fruit needed for local markets, and the village production was left to its own devices, with research going to rubber, oil palm and later to rice. Although some academic research on bananas exists at universities and at the Malaysia Research and Development Authority (MARDI), there is little connection with commercial development.
Banana in Malaysia

The regimes of banana

The regimes of banana
Bananas represent one of the most widely traded agricultural goods in the world with annual export valued at five billion dollars. Though bananas are typically seen as an undifferentiated commodity, historically divergent patterns of trade regulation have defined two distinct commodity systems for this fruit: the dominant dollar Banana system centered on the U.S market and the smaller Banana trade between Europe and its former African, Caribbean and Pacific colonies.

The banana trade has historically been forged through global and local forces that simultaneously connect and divide major Latin American and Caribbean sites of production and major North American and European sites of consumption. In recent decades there have been two regimes regulating the trade in bananas: Dollar Bananas have been regulated by free market conditions shaped by oligopolistic power of key transnational corporations, while African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) have been regulated by preferential market agreement between nations. The conflict between ACP and Dollar Banana regimes – or Banana Wars – illuminates historical tensions between these two systems and the emergence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the new arbiter of the global market.
The regimes of banana

Bananas after Harvesting

Bananas after Harvesting
The banana stem or bunch contain 56-14 hands (clusters of single bananas on the stem) and weighs 30-130 lb (13.6 – 59 kg). The stem is harvested when the single bananas are mature but green. The tree is the cut down. Bananas handled mainly as a fresh fruit and shipped from the growing area while still green. At one time, bananas were shipped as bunches, on the stem but today, they are handled mostly as hands or groups of single bananas, cuts from the stem and packed in plastic-lined boxes.

They may be treated with fumigants prior to boxing and should be precooled to 57 – 62 F. Bananas are subject to a chilling injury if held below 55 F: low temperatures kill certain surface cells and prevent normal ripening. Nor should bananas be held for extended periods at temperatures above 70 F; they must therefore be shipped under controlled temperatures. Bananas are ripened at 58 – 64 F, but the process can be accelerated by subjecting the fruit to ethylene gas.
Bananas after Harvesting