Bananas are definitely a super healthy fruit. It has many nutrients like starches that fuel our body and potassium, magnesium and many other vitamins.
They also come in different vibrant colors like most commonly green and yellow but in some parts of the world they can also be found in different shades of orange and sometimes you will even find a red one.
Because bananas are made up of easy digestible starches they are a great source for fuel. Because when you eat them the starch gets metabolized to glucose and the body uses it for energy. Because of this bananas are and easy and healthy breakfast food that is super popular.
Bananas are also super versatile as you can not just eat them raw. You can also eat them broiled, boiled, blended, candied and fried you can also dry them to make banana chips out of them. So as you can see they can be eaten in every different variation. And in a supermarket you can spot them by just their shape but why is it that bananas are so extraordinary and always curved.
Bananas grow as banana buds out of the pseudo stem, the middle trunk of a banana tree. These then grow to big red flowers that look like a cone hanging upside down. The long red petals of the flower enclose the banana that at this stage looks like a slender yellow flower. When the fruit then grows it has a color change from yellow to green. In this stage they look like green thin rectangular fingers that grow in rows out of the stalk.
Now the negative geotropism starts. Geotropism means the growth of plants in respect of gravity. Negative geotropism is when the parts of a plant like the leaves and flowers grow towards the sun and with that away from gravity, the ground. In contrast to roots, that grow downwards in the direction of the middle of the earth, that have positive geotropism.
Bananas hang with the bottom of the fruit higher than the bottom. When bananas are growing the fruits get heavy and begin to sink downwards. But they naturally seek sun so as the fruit is maturing they begin to curve upwards in the direction of the sun. But why do they do this? Because of a chemical called auxin this chemical that every banana contains lets them respond to sunlight. Because of this Bananas are kind of folding against their selves which causes them to curve.
Also bananas nowadays get breed to be “perfect” so the farmers use auxin herbicides so the bananas they cultivate are long, yellow without any marks and curved.
But you can still find straight bananas. As there are 1000 different kinds of bananas that differ in size, thickness, color, and also shape. What we have in our stores are the perfect Cavendish bananas. Bananas growing in the wild are mostly small brown and straight, just like ladyfingers.
I hope that this article has helped you resolve this mystery and that you have learned something new.
Sources:
https://australianbananas.com.au/Pages/all-about-bananas/mind-bending-facts
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/worklife/a10253398/why-bananas-are-bent/