Yes, we have bananas

Press, 6 May 1983, Page 14

Yes, we have bananas

It’s little wonder that when hoaxers looked for a fruit to fool the Christchurch public with a health scare they should choose the banana. New Zealanders have become one of the world’s highest consumers of what a former British Prime Minister called “the most delicious fruit

in the world.”

From

PETER TAYLOR

in Wellington

For some reason it has been my task over the years to buy the week’s fruit. It has reached the stage where the business has become a ritual.

“What shall I get?” “Oh, I don’t know. Some bananas, I suppose, and whatever else there is.”

Consequently there are always bananas in the house. It must be the same in almost every house in New Zealand, because last year the nation ate its way through more than two million cartons of what Benjamin Disraeli once described as “the most delicious fruit in the world.”

In doing so we have become one of the world’s highest per capita consumers of bananas. Most of what we ate came from Ecuador; the rest, some 8 per cent, came from the Pacific Islands and over half of that, from the Cook Islands.

The job of importing bananas is that of Fruit Distributors, Ltd, a company set up at the request of the Government in 1951 to ensure the New Zealand consumer had adequate supplies at even prices throughout the country at all times.

The result is that if there is nothing else in the fruit shop, there are always bananas — as I for one well know.

Although it may be plentiful, the banana is not just any common old fruit. It has a history stretching far back into antiquity, and was prob-

ably one of the first plants domesticated by man.

Born iri Asia, it is believed to have been found by the Western world when in 327 B.C. Alexander’s conquering armies reached the Indus Valley. Some believe that even before then traders took the fruit to the great centres of civilisation in the Middle East. The Koran holds the banana plant to be the Tree of Paradise, the Christian equivalent of the Tree of Knowledge, and the fruit itself to be that which Adam and Eve were forbidden to sample but to which Eve succumbed because it so resembled Adam’s virile organ that she could not resist temptation.

A heavenly express then carried the pair off to Ceylon from where they later travelled to Mecca taking with them the root of all their troubles, the banana. Part of the legend was picked up in medieval Europe where to this day it is preserved in France as figue d’Adam and in Italy as fico d’Adamo. The banana arrived in Africa via Arab outposts in Morocco and Sudan, then with the Portuguese to the Canary Islands and from there via the Spaniards to the Americas.

From the nineteenth century onwards the fruit became the story of Yankee business which transformed it into the most common fruit on earth.

The bananas has long been depicted in art, literature and song. Probably its earliest depiction is at Ninevah some 5000 years ago where portrayals are etched in sculptures and monuments illustrating noble feasts. It is also depicted in the frescoes in the temples of Ajanta in India around 443 B.C.

It appears, too, in the Ramayana, one of the holy books of India, as one of the foods which kept King Rama alive during a long banishment from his kingdom. As for it being in song, who has not heard of the “Banana Boat Song” or “Yes, We Have No Bananas (Today)”? When Japanese paper currency was circulated in Singapore during the last war the notes were called banana dollars because of their low purchasing power. The famous dancer, Josephine Baker, made her reputation in 1924 when she danced at the Folies Bergere with a string of bananas around her waist as her sole costume. In her biography she

maintained her 50 years of stage life had been based on the banana.

A British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, reflecting on his political career, also had a word to say about the yellow fruit. “When I was Cabinet-making,” he said, “I had sandwiches as my nourishment. What a better job I would have made of it on bananas!” The fruit has also been used as a political punishment. In 1977 the citizens of Coacalco in Mexico, having already stoned the local police commander and his deputy for the shooting of a workman, captured the mayor arid forced him to eat 12 pounds of mashed bananas as his share of atonement. Crammed full of bananas, the hapless mayor promptly resigned. Mashed bananas have other uses, too. In 1974 two explorers driving across the Chilean desert used them in the sump of their car when they ran out of oil. Of course slipping on a banana skin has been the stuff of comedy for years. In the days of the Keystone Cops, passengers brought several successful lawsuits against railway companies in America after complaining that they sustained bodily injury after slipping and falling on banana skins.

Now I can hear my wife calling that it’s about time I bought some more fruit. Honestly, one day she’ll drive me bananas!