Bananas: The ideal food for humans

Summary from the book...
"Your Natural Diet: Alive Raw Foods"
by T. C. Fry and David Klein

Bananas: The ideal food for humans

Bananas deserve the highest rank as food for humans. It is one of the oldest foods of humans and has been treasured for its deliciousness. The ancients referred to the banana plant as the "Paradise Tree" and its fruit as the fruit of paradise. Bananas are one of our most important foods and deserve a far greater role in our diet - in fact, they should be our foremost item of diet as they are with many tropical peoples, who also eat other tropical fruits such as breadfruit, jackfruit, coconut, mango, etc. We are a class of frugivores that achieved our high development with fruits of the tree as the bulk of our diet. Fruits of the tree in our pristine habitat were mostly sweet fruits such as bananas, figs, grapes and dates.

In its general suitability and beneficence in the human diet few foods approach the banana. It is, ecologically and biologically, our most ideal food. Dates, figs, grapes, melons, oranges, quite common foods, deserve a place in our diet but in the final analysis, the banana wins on practically every count: economy, nutrition, convenience, plenitude, deliciousness, etc. Apples are a wholesome food but they are woefully deficient in protein, having only 0.2% by dry weight and then two or three essential amino acids, whereas bananas have all essential amino acids and have about 5.2% protein dry weight.

Bananas are available all through the year. It is best to buy them organically grown and green for ripening at home, where ripening conditions can be controlled - you can try putting them in a brown paper bag overnight and expose them to air during the day. Commercially grown bananas are usually picked long before they are ripe and nutritionally mature, and "gassed" with ethylene to facilitate ripening, as well as treated with such toxic chemicals as methyl bromide and aldicarb. Ethylene is the naturally occurring ripening gas produced by fruits, it is commercially synthesized by pyrolysis of hydrocarbons. Some organically grown bananas may also be gassed with ehylene so your best odds of getting ungassed organic bananas may be to get them green. Its also good idea to ask your grower if bananas have been gassed and to request ungassed organic bananas.




















Eat only nr 7, others are not ripe yet

Select bananas free from surface bruises, with skin intact at both tips. Ripen at room temperature. When the skin is bright yellow speckled with brown, the starch has changed to fruit sugar, and the fruit will be tender sweet and easy to digest. Fruit that ripens with brown speckles may not have been gassed, as i have been told that gassed bananas ripen with dark streaks and blotches instead of the brown speckles.

I stress bananas as major item in the diet primarily for reasons of overall goodness, availability and economy. It is of course beneficial to include other fruits as food, such as fresh figs, dates, grapes, or some other highly nutritious fruits, plus greens, some sea soft vegetables and nuts.

Humans are frugivores to their very cores! We will do best if we respect our natural disposition. The banana is one of the ideal foods in the human diet.