In Defense of Green Bananas
My husband, Chris, thinks I’m crazy. Actually, most people do, when they find out I love green bananas. I’ll get even crazier for you: I detest yellow bananas and refuse to eat ones with even one speckle of brown.
When he goes to Trader Joe’s each week to shop for our groceries (God bless him for taking on this particular chore solo and allowing me to stay home; I detest grocery shopping, no matter where I’m doing it.), Chris dutifully scans the mountain of bananas, surveying and appraising the offerings until he finds the greenest bunch of all.
“Mmmm, green bananas,” I’ll say gleefully when he gets home. “I can’t believe you can eat those,” he always replies, with a sniff of disgust. And I do: Almost every week, I eat every single banana he brings home, gobbling them up while they’re still green, before they turn. If one of them happens to make it past the first few days and develop so much as one brown speckle, I cast it off with my own sniff of disgust. “Here,” I’ll say to Chris. “It’s yours.”
What’s so repulsive about yellow and brown bananas, you ask? Let me count the ways: First, they’re too dang sweet. Second, am I the only one bothered by how mushy and mealy they get? I’m not typically troubled by textures — I’ll eat oatmeal, tapioca and bread pudding with the best of them — but, man, give me a mushy banana and I am deeply, deeply repulsed. And third, the riper the banana, the stronger they smell. To me, there is nothing worse than that pungent, overpowering, turning-to-rotten banana smell. (I actually just gagged writing that sentence.)
Now, friends, consider the gloriousness of a green banana: It is firmer. It tastes fresher, brighter even. And for the love of everything that is holy, it is sweet, but not too sweet. Green bananas, my friends, are perfect bananas.
Okay, okay, so you want to get down to the brass-nutrition tacks? Sure, let’s do it. While the calories in underripe and overripe bananas are roughly the same (about 100 calories in an average-sized version of each), the nutrient makeup is what accounts for the difference in taste. Underripe bananas — the green ones I love so much — have more resistant starch, a special type of dietary fiber that your body can’t digest or absorb (hence, the whole “resistant” thing). It promotes fat burning, helps you feel fuller longer and reduces hunger. It is precisely this starch that changes to simple sugar as the banana ripens, which makes yellow and brown bananas taste sweeter.
(Ripe bananas, of course, do have their own health benefits, including a higher antioxidant level than unripe ones. But let’s be honest, folks: I’m not here to convince you to eat ripe bananas. I’m simply telling you why the green ones are better.)
The one exception I’ll make in my banana intake is to allow a ripened one (ick) to find its way into a smoothie or banana whip. In these cases, I’m using them as the actual sweetener, so more sugar makes sense. But if you want me to simply peel and eat a banana as-is, it’s Team Green all the way.
In fact, it was my green-banana obsession that drove me to experiment with ways to keep bananas greener longer. Those experiments turned into one of the most popular posts on Be Well Philly, How to Keep Bananas from Turning Brown, which still earns boatloads of traffic more than two years later.
It makes me think that there are more members of Team Green than any of us realize. I know from experience as a green-banana lover that this particular team can be a lonely place to be: the quizzical, almost judgmental looks you get as you struggle to peel an underripe banana (yes, the downside is they don’t peel quite as easily), and the even more judgmental looks you get as you begin to eat one with utter joy.
So to my fellow closeted Team Green members, allow this post to be your official battle cry, your moment to come out of the woodwork and declare loudly for all the Internet to see (in the comments section, please) your undying, unwavering love for green bananas. I’m almost certain there are dozens of us … DOZENS.
And to the yellow- or, worse, brown-banana lovers among us, I ask you what’s always been asked of me: How in the world can you stand eating ripe bananas when green ones are so, so, so much better? As far as I’m concerned, y’all are the crazy ones.
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