No, we're not. Back in the 1950s our grandparents were eating Gros Michel bananas. Now, we're eating (by all accounts) inferior Cavendish bananas.
https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/history-of-the-gros-m...
All the other species of bananas tend to turn brown almost immediately after or around the time they are fully ripe, and that makes them less commercially viable.
So I would say that these gene splices are less interesting for the Cavendish directly and more interesting for bringing genetic diversity into the produce isle. We could have five kinds of banana like we have five kinds of pears. Which indirectly helps the Cavendish by slowing down the doom clock on banana plantations.
Side note: Let us avoid pseudoscientific and pseudophilosophical language like this bit. It is suggestive of the homunculus fallacy, it misconstrues the nature of perception, and ignores the role of habit and cultural influences. It's also artificial, stylistically stodgy, and comes off as pretentious in a gauche, pop sci kind of way.
The market demands bananas that are not brown when they are ripe.
its almost as if the roles of habit and cultur influence the way that a human brain makes sense of its stimulus.
The Cavendish—the dominant grocery store banana—is one of the few that turns mushy and unpleasant when it does.
When slightly green, it has a more veggie-like taste and not the super sweet and pungent banana smell/taste. I don’t like them when yellow/browning.
Horses for courses I guess :)
Unpleasant for eating as a banana but quite pleasant for baking. I always buy more banana's than I can possibly eat before they get overripe, eat them raw until they get mushy then make banana bread with the remainder.
Benefits of brown: Sweeter, softer, better for making banana bread :) https://www.womensweeklyfood.com.au/recipe/baking/banana-bre...
Food waste will not be addressed properly without cultural shifts. Granted, certain technological improvements may prompt them, but that's a bit backwards of a problem solving method.
But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
> But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?
I think cost is not as relevant here, moreso that people will buy more bananas, as they will brown less quickly, but will often overshoot.
Kind of how the hatred of dealing with printer companies and their extortionist ink prices accelerated the shift to paperless.
So maybe we’ll get to a better state, perhaps not through the means we expected.
In addition to price (which is a function of efficiency), I wouldn't shift any more of my eating behavior to out of the house until the following problems are solved.
* Portion sizes. I usually eat 600-800 calories in a sitting at home. This portion size is considered a light meal in restaurants, and generally has less appealing options and ordering it sends weird social signals.
* Healthier food. Most restaurants use more oils and salt than my preference. The vegetables and fruit are usually less fresh than even Walmart/Kroger offers.
* Time investment. I can cook and clean maybe 25 different dishes in less than 20 minutes of focused work at home. Much more if you count semi-prepared foods that come frozen or in boxes. The only thing that competes with time investment is hot food delivery, which comes at about a 8x price premium compared to cooking.
Food is tricky because once you have food processed or prepared, and you don't have the raw ingredients, you really have no fucking clue what you are ingesting. Most people act, and assume that they do.
Off topic, if we apply this to AI, in theory we could work less, with AI making us more efficient and allowing us to achieve the same results. But because we are humans, we are going to value our work less, and ask ourselves to work more.
Pro tip: Buy your grapes, take them home, rinse them and promptly remove them from the vine. They will last up to a week in the fridge if the plant they grew on isn't desperately trying to stay alive longer with zero hope of survival by feeding on the grapes.
https://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/vegan-menus-collecti...
"No food is wasted" is another way of saying "we are in the middle of a famine and people are eating everything they can."
Food waste is a deliberate government policy decision to prevent famines in lean years. This is explicit for some products, but the benefit still exists for other products.
If you live in NA, maybe pineapples, bananas and coconuts are not the best choice as they require special treatments to cope with transportation to reach your table. While maybe pears, apples and a number of berries would travel much less and require less treatments.
Done really want to waste research resources just for yellower bananas?
¹ Final color of banana may not actually be brown.
It seems to suggest this is about preventing unpeeled bananas from browning (yellow becomes spots becomes brown). Because it starts "Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe banana" and continues "designed to have a longer shelf life".
But the actual details are not that. It is merely:
> said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled
Huh? First of all, I don't know if half-eaten bananas are a major problem with food waste. People usually eat a whole one. And who cares about the peel remaining yellow after it's peeled...? The flesh of a Cavendish banana is off-white, not yellow...
It also says:
> and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation.
Is that a thing? Bananas are usually hard and green during these phases. If they're damaged so much they turn brown while unripe, I don't think I still want to eat them...