By Dan Koeppel
I love learning more about everyday subjects. How things are made, and the history behind everyday food and objects fascinates me. I like knowing more about the things in my life. Enter the book, Banana. I eat an apple every day of the week and a banana about half the days. A few years ago I read about Apples. Very interesting. I told everyone I worked with facts about apples for months. Unfortunately for me the guy I was working with while reading about bananas didn’t like them. He also didn’t want to hear about them. Oh well.
I’d like to be able to compare apple lore to banana lore, (specifically on the topic of the Garden of Eden) but I lent the book to my Dad. I think he actually started reading it, but alas has never brought it back. Dan (the author) makes a case for the tree of wisdom being a banana plant and not an apple tree. Ancient texts in Hebrew and Greek don’t identify the fruit as an apple. It’s more like a fig, and bananas have been referred to as figs (fingers) throughout history.
The problem? When translating Hebrew to Latin, Saint Jerome (around AD 400) translated “good and evil” fruit to malumor malicious. Malum could also be translated as. Adam and Eve used fig leaves to cover themselves. Banana leaves are large and are still used as clothing, rope, bedding etc. in modern times. Also, Eden was probably located in the Middle East in an area better suited to grow bananas rather than trees. Finally, Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, designated the banana as Musa sapentium, meaning wise. Musa derives from mauz, Arabic for banana, where in the Koran the forbidden tree is called the talh, the tree of paradise or banana tree.
Well enough about ancient history. The book traces bananas around the world but spends most of the time focusing on North and South America. The banana came to light in 1876 at the World’s fair. America’s love affair started afterwards. Up until World War II, American’s ate the Gros Michel. Disease later wiped out the Big Mike. Today we eat the Cavendish. It too will be wiped out, probably within our lifetimes. The problem is that commercial bananas are sterile and all the plants are clones. So when one fungus or bacteria comes around that can infect the Cavendish, the whole crop will be destroyed. When bananas were first marketed to the masses, people were told not to refrigerate their bananas because it would turn them brown. The ads failed to mention that this would also keep them fresh longer and that unrefrigerated they would turn brown anyway as they ripened. Anything to sell more product.
The majority of the book deals with the banana companies of America. United Fruit, Standard Fruit, now Chiquita and Dole, and how they acquired land to set up banana plantations. They manipulated the governments of Central and South American countries. They even got help form the US government and military to quell worker riots and uncooperative government leaders. You know, uncooperative residents who insisted that the companies pay their fair share of taxes, treat workers humanly, etc. Very unreasonable demands that needed to be resisted. By installing favorable governments into power they were able to keep expanding their plantations and also gave birth to the phrase Banana Republic.
Reading about how the banana companies created their empires was eye opening, and depressing. Maybe it’s better to remain ignorant about our countries history in cases like this. No, probably not. The book went on to chronicle the changes that have been made today. Most plantations are independently owned. Conditions and rights for the workers are a little better. You might even be able to find fair trade bananas in your supermarket. If you enjoy a well told story with the bonus of learning about something you probably eat everyday, read "Banana"
Happy Mother's Day!
14 years ago
