It’s a world few know or imagine. Inside the mammoth new Randalls supermarket warehouse in Dallas, six tall garage-type doors open to long skinny rooms. The doors are bright yellow, a hint of things to come.
If you didn’t know better, you might think the rooms held Grandma’s antiques or a sailboat in dry dock. But lift up the garage doors and you’ll see towering boxes of bananas.
The double rooms are 30 feet deep and more than three stories high. Stand in the aisle running the length of the narrow room–10 to 12 feet wide–and you can reach out and touch bananas on either side. Lots of them. More than 2,000 boxes, or 80,000, pounds of bananas. It’s here and in a similar setup in Houston that Randalls ripens its bananas before shipment to the chain’s 125 stores.
This is the modern world of the nation’s most popular fruit, where an increased number of store chains have built banana-ripening rooms designed to turn out fruit just the right colors at the right time. In these climate-controlled places, computers and temperature probes, forced air and pressurized doors combine to bring bananas to a buff condition 365 days a year.
It’s cool enough for a jacket in the ripening rooms, with moisture and ethylene gas (the naturally occurring gas given off by bananas and other fruits) dispensed inside to help control the process from starchy fruit to cereal-bowl sweet. The moisture makes your skin glow and finishes off what hair the hard hat doesn’t cover.
Bananas enter the chambers totally green and spend three to five days in boxes with holes through which ethylene-enriched air circulates–you can actually feel it–to turn them light golden, ensuring even ripening, unlike a container left on its own. At that moment, they are trucked to the stores.
Brian Griesemer, Dallas-area director of transportation and distribution, says that when he started with Randalls 15 years ago, ripening assistance was more primitive. Water was sprayed on the floor to provide humidity, temperatures were adjusted manually, doors were opened to vent. Now, everything is high-tech and computer-monitored via those probes inserted into the boxes.
Adel Kader, who studies technologies to bring better fruit to the table, says that while the basics of ripening haven’t changed, the work that has gone on recently has been directed at defining and improving the ripening process and monitoring it.
“Bananas still have to be handled carefully from the beginning of shipping in the tropics to the destination,” explains Kader, professor of post-harvest physiology at the University of California at Davis.
They have to be protected from temperatures below 58 degrees, for instance. Even a few hours of exposure will cause damage and bananas will not be as good. So the No. 1 issue in ripening rooms is to bring the temperature of the fruit closer to 65 degrees, maintaining humidity in the 90 percent to 95 percent range. Then add the ethylene gas, while monitoring the color change of the fruit.
Babied bananas
The TLC is paying off. Bananas that have been carefully handled and ripened have less interior damage, the fruit is less bruised and lasts longer. A hand of such bananas, purchased randomly in a store, lasted a week on this writer’s kitchen counter.
In today’s eat-more-fruit, eat-on-the-go, eat-low-fat society, bananas are a big deal. In 1998, the per-capita consumption of bananas was 29 pounds, almost 10 pounds more than fresh apples, bananas’ nearest competitor, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Sixty-five percent of consumers buy bananas as least once a week, reports The Packer’s Fresh Trends trade magazine. And grocers don’t want to hear that any of their shoppers can’t find the right ripeness of bananas on the shelf. The item represents 10 percent of the produce department sales, and a good display of bananas brings people into the store on a regular basis. It sets the standard for the produce department.
Although a few bananas are grown in Hawaii, most are imported from places like Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama and Colombia. Bananas don’t grow on trees, but on plants, members of the lily/orchid family. Picked green because they travel better that way, the bananas are shipped by boat to various U.S. ports.
Some banana and distribution companies offer pre-ripening services. Whole Foods Market, for instance, gets its produce from Texas Health Distributors, which uses Quality Bananas Co. out of Houston to ripen its conventional and organic bananas.
But large grocery chains say it is cheaper to do it themselves. There is less handling of the fruit, too, and they can control the ripening better, timing it for their various stores and the season. The beginning of school, for instance, generally sees a rise in banana consumption, whether for lunch boxes or breakfast cereal bowls.
A banana’s awakening
When bananas arrive at the grocery warehouses, they are checked for color, scarring, something called latex sheen, internal temperature and other characteristics. But not sugar, because the bananas are so green they are still starchy. The sweetness comes as the bananas ripen.
There is little banana smell in the ripening rooms. Aroma is noticeable at the later stages of banana ripening. Commercial banana ripening is like sleep. After picking, the bananas are shipped at 58 degrees, a snoozing temp, on the boat. In the ripening rooms, the gas gradually wakes them up. They start changing color.
In the banana world, the ripeness of the fruit is graded by colors and numbers. Green bananas are 1s and 2s; 3 is half green, half yellow. At stages 3 and 4, the bananas are sent to the stores, more yellow than green.
That gives bananas a little holding time before consumers bite into them at home, usually at a stage 5 (yellow, with green tips and green necks), or even 6 or 7 for those who really go for the gold, maybe flecked with brown spots.
Banana ripeness is a matter of taste. And a guessing game for suppliers. Bananas take nine months to grow. So today the challenge is trying to figure out how many bananas consumers will be eating in March.
Ripening rooms have been so successful that stores are adding more to accommodate peaches, pears, melons and mangoes.
But post-harvest fruit technology is not stopping there. Researchers are studying different methods to pull more of the ethylene gas out of the banana to slow ripening even more, making the fruit last longer at home.
They are looking at ways to slow down yellow bananas when a warehouse has misjudged and ripened more than it can sell.
They are experimenting with temperature sensitivity and how well specialty bananas–plantains, red, manzanos–respond to ethylene gas. They are evaluating different methods of ripening-room monitoring.
And so the quest for the perfect banana goes on.
AT HOME WITH THE BANANA
Once the supermarket has done its job of selling you an attractive bunch, banana care is in your hands. Some tips:
– Keep bananas at room temperature unless you want to halt the ripening process.
– While refrigeration will extend the life of ripe bananas, it may darken the skin. But it will not hurt the fruit inside.
– Don’t place bananas in the bottom of a fruit bowl or basket. They will become mashed.
– A banana tree or stand supports the fruit, gives equal air opportunity, and may extend the life of the bunch. But the fruit might not ripen as quickly as it would in a bowl.
– 3 medium bananas equals about 1 cup mashed
– One medium banana has 110 calories, no fat, 1.6 grams of fiber, 29 grams of carbohydrates and 451 milligrams of potassium.
– And because someone is bound to ask:
The word “banana” is credited to Portuguese interpretations of West African names for the fruit: banna, bana, gbana, funana, abana and banane, according to Susan Quick in “Go Bananas!”
— K.C.
CARAMEL BANANA MILKSHAKE
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Yield: 2 servings
An ultrathick shake made with caramel ice cream (you can substitute vanilla) that tastes like buttery bananas. It’s adapted from “Go Bananas!” by Susan Quick.
2 ripe bananas, frozen, sliced
2 large scoops dulce de leche (caramel) ice cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
Combine ingredients in blender, adding just enough milk to make the shake drinkable through a straw.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ………… 260 Fat ………… 8 g Saturated fat … 5 g
% calories from fat .. 27 Cholesterol .. 30 mg Sodium …….. 70 mg
Carbohydrates …… 45 g Protein …… 4.5 g Fiber ……… 2.8 g
WHOLE-WHEAT BANANA WAFFLES
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Cooking time: Varies
Yield: 8 waffles, 4 servings
This recipe can be doubled. Leftover waffles freeze well.
1 cup whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup each: flour, quick-cooking oats
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 ripe banana
2 eggs
1 carton (8 ounces) plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup chopped pecans, optional
1. Stir together the flours, oats, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon in large bowl. Mash banana in medium bowl; add remaining ingredients, except pecans, beating lightly until combined. Add banana mixture to dry ingredients; stir until combined.
2. Pour into heated waffle iron. Sprinkle with about 1 tablespoon chopped nuts. Bake according to iron maker’s directions.
Nutrition information per waffle:
Calories ………… 275 Fat ………… 14 g Saturated fat … 2 g
% calories from fat .. 45 Cholesterol … 55 mg Sodium ……. 230 mg
Carbohydrates …… 32 g Protein ……… 8 g Fiber ……… 3.5 g
