But the reasons we are eating these two bananas is that their skin colors align with the ripeness of the fruit in a way that the human brain thinks makes sense. And because we are monocropping, the same family of fungi are now successfully attacking the Cavendish that took out the Gros Michel.
All the other species of bananas tend to turn brown almost immediately after or around the time they are fully ripe, and that makes them less commercially viable.
So I would say that these gene splices are less interesting for the Cavendish directly and more interesting for bringing genetic diversity into the produce isle. We could have five kinds of banana like we have five kinds of pears. Which indirectly helps the Cavendish by slowing down the doom clock on banana plantations.
> in a way that the human brain thinks makes sense.
Side note: Let us avoid pseudoscientific and pseudophilosophical language like this bit. It is suggestive of the homunculus fallacy, it misconstrues the nature of perception, and ignores the role of habit and cultural influences. It's also artificial, stylistically stodgy, and comes off as pretentious in a gauche, pop sci kind of way.
Exactly, who doesn’t know this fact, which is one of first things you learn about selection in consumed plants. And especially Guardian journalist specialising in this topic.
I think the Cavendish is better when slightly browned too, it's much sweater. Basically, not edible to me when it's just yellow. There is just a certain point when it stops being good.
>is one of the few that turns mushy and unpleasant when it does.
Unpleasant for eating as a banana but quite pleasant for baking. I always buy more banana's than I can possibly eat before they get overripe, eat them raw until they get mushy then make banana bread with the remainder.
Food waste will not be addressed properly without cultural shifts. Granted, certain technological improvements may prompt them, but that's a bit backwards of a problem solving method.
From the wikipedia article:
"As an example of where the paradox did not occur, large improvements in farming productivity (including the Third Agricultural Revolution) led to lower food prices but did not result in increased demand for food. (Demand for food is inelastic.) This instead led to lower employment in the farming sector, which declined from 40% of Americans in 1900 to less than 2% in 2024.[14]"
But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
Thank you for pointing out that food demand is inelastic, that does shift my perspective somewhat. A complication about demand for food is that American culture promotes luxury and overindulgence. Still not elastic, but more food waste than is "normal". In general, buying more food should cause more food waste.
> But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
I think cost is not as relevant here, moreso that people will buy more bananas, as they will brown less quickly, but will often overshoot.
I wonder if things like tipping culture will encourage people to eat at home and be more mindful about their consumption. I hate being extorted for 25% tips and then told if I can’t afford the 25% then I shouldn’t be eating out.
Kind of how the hatred of dealing with printer companies and their extortionist ink prices accelerated the shift to paperless.
So maybe we’ll get to a better state, perhaps not through the means we expected.
I bet current US government's economic policies will be even more effective at reducing food waste. Food waste will be radically reduced when the prices skyrocket, and the masses can barely afford their groceries, let alone eating out. Tariffs combined with deportations of agricultural labor will likely lead to that outcome.
I used to wait tables. With that said, I also don't like that wait staff costs are hidden from the menu price of a meal. It also seems very rich person cosplay to decide how much I should pay my servant wench after a meal. Even more irritating is the request to tip now for almost any food purchase and to-go order at the register. One doesn't even know where that tip goes. The food prep person? Cook? Expo? Split? To the restaurant? Who knows?
I'm not sure that eating out solves the food waste problem. I'll agree that in theory centralizing food preparation could lead to increased efficiency, but in practice eating out is most often either a luxury or convince experience and emphasizes those two things much more than cost or efficiency. Maybe one day automation can reduce labor costs allowing restaurants to sell cheaper food, but no one has seemed to figure out that problem yet.
In addition to price (which is a function of efficiency), I wouldn't shift any more of my eating behavior to out of the house until the following problems are solved.
* Portion sizes. I usually eat 600-800 calories in a sitting at home. This portion size is considered a light meal in restaurants, and generally has less appealing options and ordering it sends weird social signals.
* Healthier food. Most restaurants use more oils and salt than my preference. The vegetables and fruit are usually less fresh than even Walmart/Kroger offers.
* Time investment. I can cook and clean maybe 25 different dishes in less than 20 minutes of focused work at home. Much more if you count semi-prepared foods that come frozen or in boxes. The only thing that competes with time investment is hot food delivery, which comes at about a 8x price premium compared to cooking.
> Increasing the yield of a crop, such as wheat, for a given area will reduce the area required to achieve the same total yield. However, increasing efficiency may make it more profitable to grow wheat and lead farmers to convert land to the production of wheat, thereby increasing land use instead.
Off topic, if we apply this to AI, in theory we could work less, with AI making us more efficient and allowing us to achieve the same results. But because we are humans, we are going to value our work less, and ask ourselves to work more.
I have close to 0 food waste. My small refridgerator sits empty often. I buy enough fresh food(meats, veggies_ for a 3 days and go get more when I have close to or at 0. Most people's refridgerators are completely full and most times, they don't even know what's in there.
I have noticed that putting bananas in the fridge has a weird effect, the peel turns black like if it's outside, but the inside of the banana stays yellow and hard. It is very weird to peel a full black banana and find the inside normal without any browning
I see this all the time with bananas that go from green to brown without turning yellow, I always heard people blame the bananas getting too cold during shipping.
I lost it when I moved but we used to have a chart on the fridge that said which fruits you should or should not store together because they make each other ripen faster.
Bananas emit a gas that causes them to ripen faster. The same gas can also cause other fruits in the same space to ripen. It's weird but kinda useful. There are products out there claiming to absorb this gas, to keep everything fresh for longer.
Wild assed guess: the cold slows down the chemical reactions in the flesh of the banana but cannot save the skin. Putting bananas in a bag makes them ripen faster, and a fridge is just a larger enclosed space.
Yeah I get a little excited when I see an overripe banana in my house cuz I know my wife’s going to make banana nut bread and we’re gonna finish it all in an hour.
Other research teams are working on lettuce that wilts more slowly, bruise-resistant apples and potatoes and identifying the genes that determine how quickly grapes and blueberries shrivel.
Pro tip: Buy your grapes, take them home, rinse them and promptly remove them from the vine. They will last up to a week in the fridge if the plant they grew on isn't desperately trying to stay alive longer with zero hope of survival by feeding on the grapes.
What do you mean you don't buy grapes and then just eat all of them in one go? Interesting tip though, I know a fair bit about plants and gardening, yet this idea never occurred to me.
Trying to prevent food waste is silly. There is plenty of food where people are organized and no food where they are not. Agriculture needs stability, you need to be sure that after one year of work, you can reap the benefits of that work. This does not happens in places where any guy with an AK can come and steal your crop.
It's like a comedian (sightly obese) said: "my Mom said there are hungry children in Africa so I should finish my food. So I did. Hope that helped" (paraphrasing). The irony is that it really doesn't help. The shortage in food is caused by other problems.
Trying to prevent food waste is silly for another reason, too.
"No food is wasted" is another way of saying "we are in the middle of a famine and people are eating everything they can."
Food waste is a deliberate government policy decision to prevent famines in lean years. This is explicit for some products, but the benefit still exists for other products.
In the interest of preventing famines, food can be stacked up when too much is produced. But even with that policy, it is unlikely that anyone could achieve zero waste without increasing the risks of shortages.
I'd disagree. Title is appropriate "could cut food waste" is very true and pretty mild. A clickbait title would be "Gene-edited non-browning bananas will solve food waste problem"
Readit News
No, we're not. Back in the 1950s our grandparents were eating Gros Michel bananas. Now, we're eating (by all accounts) inferior Cavendish bananas.
https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/history-of-the-gros-m...
All the other species of bananas tend to turn brown almost immediately after or around the time they are fully ripe, and that makes them less commercially viable.
So I would say that these gene splices are less interesting for the Cavendish directly and more interesting for bringing genetic diversity into the produce isle. We could have five kinds of banana like we have five kinds of pears. Which indirectly helps the Cavendish by slowing down the doom clock on banana plantations.
Side note: Let us avoid pseudoscientific and pseudophilosophical language like this bit. It is suggestive of the homunculus fallacy, it misconstrues the nature of perception, and ignores the role of habit and cultural influences. It's also artificial, stylistically stodgy, and comes off as pretentious in a gauche, pop sci kind of way.
The Cavendish—the dominant grocery store banana—is one of the few that turns mushy and unpleasant when it does.
When slightly green, it has a more veggie-like taste and not the super sweet and pungent banana smell/taste. I don’t like them when yellow/browning.
Horses for courses I guess :)
Benefits of brown: Sweeter, softer, better for making banana bread :) https://www.womensweeklyfood.com.au/recipe/baking/banana-bre...
Unpleasant for eating as a banana but quite pleasant for baking. I always buy more banana's than I can possibly eat before they get overripe, eat them raw until they get mushy then make banana bread with the remainder.
Food waste will not be addressed properly without cultural shifts. Granted, certain technological improvements may prompt them, but that's a bit backwards of a problem solving method.
But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
> But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
I think cost is not as relevant here, moreso that people will buy more bananas, as they will brown less quickly, but will often overshoot.
Kind of how the hatred of dealing with printer companies and their extortionist ink prices accelerated the shift to paperless.
So maybe we’ll get to a better state, perhaps not through the means we expected.
In addition to price (which is a function of efficiency), I wouldn't shift any more of my eating behavior to out of the house until the following problems are solved.
* Portion sizes. I usually eat 600-800 calories in a sitting at home. This portion size is considered a light meal in restaurants, and generally has less appealing options and ordering it sends weird social signals.
* Healthier food. Most restaurants use more oils and salt than my preference. The vegetables and fruit are usually less fresh than even Walmart/Kroger offers.
* Time investment. I can cook and clean maybe 25 different dishes in less than 20 minutes of focused work at home. Much more if you count semi-prepared foods that come frozen or in boxes. The only thing that competes with time investment is hot food delivery, which comes at about a 8x price premium compared to cooking.
Deleted Comment
Off topic, if we apply this to AI, in theory we could work less, with AI making us more efficient and allowing us to achieve the same results. But because we are humans, we are going to value our work less, and ask ourselves to work more.
https://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/vegan-menus-collecti...
Pro tip: Buy your grapes, take them home, rinse them and promptly remove them from the vine. They will last up to a week in the fridge if the plant they grew on isn't desperately trying to stay alive longer with zero hope of survival by feeding on the grapes.
"No food is wasted" is another way of saying "we are in the middle of a famine and people are eating everything they can."
Food waste is a deliberate government policy decision to prevent famines in lean years. This is explicit for some products, but the benefit still exists for other products.