The various twists and turns of idle conversation eventually brought us around to the topic of bananas. My Supermodel Wife, for instance, doesn't like the texture of them. I love the taste of bananas, as long as they're ripe (very yellow with lots of brown freckles). My moms says she likes them a little under-ripe, still with a little green on the skin.
Anyway, my pops chimes in with this little tidbit:
"Did you know that if you peel a banana upside down, from the bottom where the seeds are rather than the top, where the stem is, you don't have all those stringy things to pull off?"
"Really?" I said. "Are you serious?"
"Absolutely, that's how apes eat them."
I was a little skeptical. My dad has a way of making up a lot of stuff and trying to pass if off as fact, like the time he tried to tell us that snow actually is a result of ground moister seeping up through the soil and being blown up into the air by harsh Kansas winter winds.
Anyway, it seemed to make a little sense. After all, bananas do grow upside down, so maybe that's nature's way of telling us that's how your supposed to peel them.
Well, rather than wonder if it true or not, I decided to get all scientific on your asses and do my own little version of MythBusters. So I bought a banana for lunch and decided to try this experiment in reverse banana peeling.
The first step it to cut off the bottom (witch is actually the top) of the banana. Normally, you can just break the stem and peel back the skin. But with no stem on the bottom, there's no leverage to pull. So I just used a steak knife I keep in my credenza for cutting bananas and self defense.
Note that I cut the tip of the banana high enough to remove the seeds and leave a nice finger hold for gripping the strips of skin.
So all that is left to do is peel down the skin.
As you can see the skin comes off in much the same way as peeling down from the stem. As for the stringy bits of banana flesh that you typically get, well, I still got a few small ones with this banana-peeling method. But I must say, they were much fewer and much shorter than normal.So I think I'll declare this myth CONFIRMED! Peeling a banana from the bottom is a superior banana-peeling method.
tagged: banana, peel, stem, fruit, food, nutrition, MythBustersFun Fact: One medium banana (100 g) is a good source of vitamin A; a source of vitamins B6 and C, and copper; contains 0.3 g of fat, of which 33% is saturated; provides 3 g of dietary fibre; supplies 86 kcal (360 kJ). The sodium content is low (1.2 mg/100 g) so bananas are used in low-sodium diets.
