WISDOM FROM THE KITCHEN BENCH: BENEFITS IN THE BANANA

In the world of consumer health, it’s all about slogans, shelling out the big bucks and the sanctioning of superfoods. It’s about brassicas, berries and a large amount of bullshit. To uncover prominent profundities in the produce and discover a balance in the bent; trawling supermarket isles becomes superfluous, ditching junk mail mandatory and a consumer wellbeing price check required that peels it all back to the bloody basics.

If we are in fact what we eat, beyond the dazzling marketing mantras of the goji, quinoa and buckwheat, the blueberry boosts, and our bizarre breakfast blitzes; life lessons from the ‘boring’ banana go further than skin deep. This mighty Musa is proof, that low hanging fruits offer wellbeing leverage, that price presents no qualification for preference, nutrition can be found in the normal and that there is clearly never shame in plain.

Demonstrated by distinguished doctors and analytical analphabets, bananas are widely hailed for their ability to aid digestion and gut health, moderate blood sugar, feed your friendly gut bacteria and fight your stomach nasties. They may even aid weight loss, relieve muscle cramps, and with their high potassium percentages promote heart health and positive blood pressure performance.

But laboratory science falls short on promoting the ‘bang in the bend’, and mega marketing manifestos seem to have overlooked the metaphorically comprehensive, collective and individual wellbeing benefits, harvested in the ‘hands’ of the banana. Unlike burghul, bananas develop from the ‘heart’, hang around in bunches, cling to the cluster until they are ready, and change as they mature. Growing in all types of soil, they are thick skinned, resilient, withstand storms, don’t mind the heat and do not bend to associated produce peer- pressure. Outperforming the blueberry, bananas are useful and enjoyed in all life stages, they are affordable, hold their worth and brightly present and appreciate their own value. And much to a marketer’s dismay, they don’t need regular regalia revamps, packaging patch ups, or a blitz, bling, or Botox bump up. Furthermore, wonderfully unyielding to insecurity, bananas are perfectly comfortable in their own skin, don’t stay green for long, embrace the bend, and are more than fine with full exposure and the vulnerability inflicted by the peel back.

Just in case I’ve got you thinking it’s all straight forward with the banana, the curve to consider is they don’t do well squashed or left lingering out of sight for long. Cooking in car glove boxes, bubbling in children’s school bags, and fermenting on suburban bench tops brings out the beastly and the bugs. An ecological analogy, reminding us that neglecting the important often leads to unpleasant discoveries.

So, the message of the Musa, or panacea in the peel, is that the banana in all its basics, has by nature a wholesome bent on wellbeing. It silently shouts healthy slogans for society, and proudly presents medicine for my mindfulness malaise. If life truly is, in the words of Daphne Guinness, “Full of bananas skins, you slip you carry on,” then the inherent marketing memorandum, stripped bare for all to see remains simple, self-confident and unsolicited: When life gets tough… get bent on being like a banana.