The amazing properties of Bananas

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).
• Source: http://www.thefruitpages.com/bananas.shtml