SmartShopIt Blog

I get tons of emails with tips for this and that.  Normally I put most of them in the virtual trash bin pretty quickly.  However, one caught my eye the other week.  Having worked my way through college behind an ice cream counter, I’ve made my share of banana splits.  I even remember the way we used to cut off the stem ends, Benihana’s style,  and slice them with flair to give the people watching us a little show.  It’s a wonder I never lost a finger.

But I didn’t like the strands that hung off the peel and stuck to the flesh.  Until a few weeks ago, I continued to fight them while adorning my morning cereal with this tropical treat.  This email said to watch how monkeys peel bananas.  It said they peel them from the bottom for this very reason.  And I thought it was ingenious how nature created the banana with a built in pull-tab.   Mother nature fools us again!

I am one who hates to spread Internet rumors (we know we got enough of those already), so I did my own informal research and looked for pictures of monkeys eating bananas.  Indeed, a majority of the ones that I could make out shows the monkey eating it from the non-stem end.  Granted they also tend to split the banana from that end to create a seam. Then they proceed to shove their cute little faces into the reulting gap.  Some humans, seem to mimick this behavior too :0)  Interesting to note is that in almost every picture of people eating bananas it shows them peeling from the stem end.  And we’re supposed to be higher on the evolutinary scale.

But it’s worked for me.  I’ve been peeling this way for the past few weeks and my frustration over banana strands has been greatly reduced.   Now, if I could just figure out how to keep them from turning brown so fast.  The next time you want to partake of this potassium filled fruit, take a butter knife and make a little slit on the non-stem end and peel from there.  (A finger works if you’re lacking a knife but be careful not to smash the banana.  Women have a slight advantage here with their long finger nails.)  You’ll find you have a cleaner peel.

Hope you go bananas with this tip!

Filed under: Fruits & Vegetables