There was a period in my life when I was eating upwards of 10 bananas a day. While my banana intake has drastically changed, pound for pound they remain one of the most filling and affordable plant foods and you can find them anywhere, any time of year. After consuming untold amounts of thee potassium rich and budget friendly fruit I started to wonder how a food like this, that comes from so far away, could be sold for so cheap. I looked around online and kept running into the book Banana by Dan Koeppel as what clearly seemed to be the preeminent source for the history of America’s most popular fruit. History was never really my strong suit in school and ahead of ordering the book I kept thinking back to those bland textbooks, devoid of any nuance that we had to siphon information from. Immediately after digging into the book it was evident that even though the book is packed with information, it’s miles away from the dull history books of my younger years.
So how do bananas arrive to our stateside grocery stores able to be sold for less than a $1 a pound? Countries like Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala and many of their neighbors were used as “banana republics”, a term penned by short story author O. Henry in his book “Cabbages & Kings”. When bananas first started hitting the shores of America, mostly in the New England region, the profit potential was blatant. Compared to other domestic fruits, bananas were, and remain, an exceptional deal. To secure the availability of this new and exciting tropical fruit, United Fruit Company, originally Boston Fruit, currently known as Chiquita, partnered with smaller, often politically unstable nations to establish massive banana farmlands.
After rising from janitor at a Boston Grocery store, Andrew Preston partnered with 7 other investors to bring Boston Fruit to the forefront of the banana import business. Preston told his partners he wanted bananas to be “more popular than apple” and his ambition shifted the fruit market in a colossal way. The ripening process poses some major limitations not only in banana importation, but most fresh foods and it was Preston who pushed for large scale refrigerated shipping, a revolutionary practice never seen before in the import business at such an expansive scale. This may sound like a no brainer of an idea but keep in mind, they weren’t able to use condensers or compressed gas to maintain low temperatures throughout the transatlantic voyage, it was done with blocks of ice. Much like the early tech investors of our era, Joseph Vaccaro saw the impending shift and bought up every ice factory along the Gulf Coast. This power move enabled his to start his own banana import business, United Fruit Company’s main competition, Standard Fruit Company, known these days as Dole.
A lot has changed since then, from the politics to the fruit itself. Much like today, back then coast to coast in America there was 1 type of banana, the Gros Michel which translates to Big Mike. After WWII the Gros Michel disappeared forever when Panama Disease began to quickly ravage plantation after plantation. Ironically, this thick-skinned fruit, one of the tougher ones available, is actually pretty weak when faced with a malady as brutal as Panama Disease. By 1960 the Gros Michel had disappeared leaving the banana industry on the brink of similar fate until a hero arose.
Today, when you pick up a bunch of bananas, unless you opt for plantains or are fortunate enough to find some of the smaller red varieties, it’s going o be a Cavendish. Banana species the world over from New Zealand to Latin America were all too susceptible to Panama Disease to replace the Gros Michel. The banana industry learned from their previous vulnerability and knew above strength, texture or taste, the replacement had to be able to resist Panama Disease and the Cavendish was able to fill that void. Thankfully it’s a tasty variety, though it’s said that the Gros Michel variety of yesteryear was much more flavorful and creamy.
While it hasn’t been completely smooth sailing with the Cavendish, it’s endured enough to remain the most widely eaten variety of fruit in America though globally, mangos still reign supreme, rightfully so. God, I love mangos. It took more than just accessibility and a low price point to bring bananas to their ubiquitous level of popularity. As mother began feeding their babies mashed bananas, United Fruit began hiring doctors to endorse the practice while promotion the practice themselves in advertisements. Knowing that dethrowning cereal as the king of breakfast was a near impossibly, United Fruit originated and cemented the idea that slice banana on top of cereal with milk was a complete and balanced breakfast. To cement this concept they even began putting coupons for bananas on cereal boxes and established education departments devoted to generating and distributing materials that told of the fruits benefits. These ad campaigns were so deeply ingrained in society their reach can still be felt.
Like many thing in our world, from a consumer standpoint, the story of the banana is a triumphant one with an often unseen background of political and social injustice leading those doing the most work to getting the short end of the stick in the ordeal. The conditions of workers, especially in nations where banana farming is far and away the most vital industry like Guatemala, got so oppressive that things eventually boiled over, leading to wars and civic uprising, spearheaded by a young medical student by the name of Che Guevara.
“I tried to muster a group of young men like me to fight against the United Fruit adventures. In Guatemala it was necessary to fight but hardly anybody fought. It was necessary to resist and hardly anybody wanted to do that”
Whether you’re a high carb vegan knocking back banana smoothies by the gallon or just an occasional banana eater, the story of this fruit is a fascinating one to investigate and Koeppel’s done an outstanding job of summarizing the tale in a intriguing and manageable way. With such an expansive history, the book could easily be twice the size but at around 250 pages it’s an approachable synopsis that had me engrossed from beginning to end. The revolutionary history of this universally loved fruit coupled with Koeppel’s seasoned investigative writing style make for an informative, surprising and concise abbreviation of a story the reaches farther than I’d imagined.
Bananas and their importers changed the way produce is shipped, how we view this tropical fruit and the daily dietary habits of millions of people, but the future of the industry is never certain. Panama disease continues to spread and modified versions of the Cavendish are being created to maintain resilience while organically produced bananas are grown at higher altitudes which aren’t subject to the potential risk of their conventional counterparts, though due to the land availability and consumer demand they couldn’t nearly fill what the market orders. Could we see another collapse in our life like the world saw with the Gros Michel? It’s possible. So the next time you’re enjoying a perfectly ripened banana, savor it, because it took generations of work, war and innovation to bring this exotic and quintessential fruit to our reach.