Back to Coconut Studio Home Page

 Seashore Foraging & Fishing Study

 I am also writing a regular weblog at coconutstudio blogspot

Richard Parker 
Siargao Island 
December 2004

Lack of Sex Life Threatens Banana Crops !

The Story of the Banana

Banana Nutrition?

What's wrong with Nutrition Charts

Why So Many Pacific Islanders Are Obese Alcoholics

Don’t Waste Anything !

Bananas are the world's fourth largest staple crop and they provide a livelihood for half a billion people. Nearly 100 million tons are grown annually and half a billion people depend on them.
Westerners eat only the 15% of the crop which are sweet dessert bananas

The banana is, after all, an ideal food. At least one imaginative creationist has seriously suggested that its near-perfect design is evidence of God's existence.
It is ergonomically shaped to fit the human hand, with a non-slip surface. It has an outward indicator of ripeness—green, yellow and black. Its disposable wrapper has a tab at one end for removal and perforated edges for easy peeling. Add the fact that the banana has a pointed end and curved shape for easy entry into the mouth, and who could argue that it was indeed an act of divine inspiration?

Banana is the only raw fruit permitted for people suffering from gastric ulcer, and is also recommended for infantile diarrhea. Banana is also used as a source of carbohydrate in coeliac disease and in the relief of colitis.
Source

Going Bananas

I strongly believe that bananas, along with coconuts, taro and seafoods, gave the ancient peoples of my island, together with others spread all along the coasts of South East Asia  and the Indian Ocean, where many settled after thousands of years strandloping along the beaches, an absolutely ideal pre-agricultural diet. It was certainly a great deal better than the rice-based food which pervades the region today.

Bananas almost certainly originated in South-East Asia, and perhaps in the Southern Philippines/Borneo region.

Until I started this study (I have only been 'on-site' and thinking about it for about a month now) all I knew about bananas was a WWII song 'Yes, We Have No Bananas' and articles such as the one below. Then, just a week ago, I had some boiled sweet local bananas for breakfast, and nearly broke a tooth on their peppercorn seeds. (Bananas don't have seeds, as anyone will tell you). I also remembered an argument with my neighbour, who chopped down my own rampant banana tree, that had mysteriously  grown from nothing.

I asked some of my research team how many varieties of local bananas and plantains there were available on the island.

They came up with an initial list of 12:

  Estampilko
  Lakatan
  Litungdan
  Sab-a*
  Karnaba
  Pelipita
  Manila
  Bungoyan*
  Paguha
  Tundanon
  Tindok*
  Tumbaga*

Having done the theory bit, I despatched the 'banana crew' out to the wilds of the island to find as many varieties as were available. So far, we have 8 of the 12.

Lakatan

Estampilko

Sab-a

Still to be tracked down

Litungdan

Pelipita Sometimes this variety has fully-developed little
black seeds, but not always

Karnaba - This really a plantain - good  for cooking; it has
far more vitamins and minerals than even the best rice.

Bungoyan
Still missing

Manila

Tundanon

Paguha - Has small 'peppercorn' hard black seeds
this one is not quite ripe.

Tindok (Large plantain)  - Still missing

Tumbaga (red-skinned variety) - I found this
lady with a bunch of Tumbaga in Dapa, Siargao Island's
'port'.

Lack of Sex Life Threatens Banana Crops ! ! ! !

Steve Conner - The Independent (London)
 July 27, 2001

The banana's sex life—or lack of it—is cause for growing concern to farmers and scientists.

The domestic banana that we know and love is an asexual clone, one that results from the sedate, artificial act of vegetative propagation. And no pollinated sex means no annoying seeds, which may be good news for hungry consumers but also means that there's little or no genetic variation—and hence little or no resistance to the banana's many natural enemies
Devoid of sex, the poor cloned banana is a sitting target for any pest. Finding a way of introducing a little spice—and therefore genetic variety—into the reproductive life of the banana (and its cousin the plantain) is therefore a pressing problem.
That's why a project to do just that has now begun. Announced recently, it involves scientists from 11 countries forming a consortium to decode the banana's genome within the next five years.
As with the human genome project, the information will reveal much about the genes that make a banana what it is, and more importantly what it might be with a little extra help. This information—and any resulting advances in genetic modification—will be of profound importance, not just to banana boffins, but to a large proportion of humanity.
The banana is the world's fourth largest staple crop, one on which the livelihoods of half a billion people depend. But, recently, an evil-sounding beast called the Black Sigatoka fungus has been throwing those livelihoods into jeopardy.
Black Sigatoka, along with the weevils, worms and viruses that also routinely attack bananas, is a particularly disturbing menace in the tropics, where the cooking banana and starchy plantain provide up to a quarter of the daily intake of essential calories.
Only the banana plantations supplying the lucrative export markets can afford the expensive pesticides and fungicides to defend their crops. For many subsistence farmers, an attack of Black Sigatoka means disaster, and sometimes even starvation.
"Resistant strains are essential for small-holder farmers, who cannot afford the expensive chemicals to begin with," says Emile Frison, director of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (Inibap), the French-based organization that is helping to run the banana genome project. "When Black Sigatoka strikes, farmers can do little more than watch their plants die. Increased hunger can swiftly follow."
The sweet dessert bananas that all Westerners know are big business, but they only account for about 15 percent of the 95 million tons of bananas grown annually.

The vast bulk of the banana family is made up of the starchy cooking bananas and plantains grown as a staple.
But all the minor varieties of cultivated banana are essentially sterile, genetically uniform clones. The banana varieties that do exist have come about not through the normal process of genetic shuffling that occurs during sexual reproduction, but by mutations within a clone that are vegetatively propagated by taking cuttings or "suckers" growing from the base of the plant.
How the banana has got away without sex for so many thousands of years owes much to the hand of man. Although wild bananas do pollinate their flowers—having the botanical equivalent of sex—their fruit is packed full of peppercorn-hard seeds, making them inedible.
The soft, yellow flesh of the edible varieties is the result of a mutation many thousands of years ago that rendered the fruits of these plants sterile. Being sterile, of course, is a major handicap in the wild—which is why the banana would not be where it is today without being propagated and carried there by humans.
There is, in fact, nothing very natural about the banana, which would have remained an obscure plant confined to somewhere in India or Malaysia had it not been for the Stone Age farmer who took a fancy to the fruit of its sterile mutant and propagated the first cutting from one of the suckers.
From Asia, prehistoric humans are thought to have taken suckers to Africa, where it quickly spread by further vegetative propagation.

The Story of the Banana

Just how important humans have been to the banana is best illustrated by the story of the Cavendish variety, the one that accounts for about nine out of every ten bananas sold in British shops.
The story starts in southern China, in 1826, when Charles Telfair, a plant collector and resident of Mauritius, took a fancy to some banana plants he had spied on his travels. Three years later, he sent a pair of them to a friend in England. On this friend's death, they were sold to the Duke of Devonshire, who grew them successfully in his glasshouses at Chatsworth House. The variety was formally named in 1836 after the Duke of Devonshire's family name, Cavendish.
From Chatsworth, horticulturalists spread the Cavendish variety far and wide, always by vegetative propagation of the suckers. John Williams, a missionary, took suckers from Chatsworth to Samoa, the Friendly Islands and Fiji. It is supposed to have reached Hawaii via Tahiti in 1855, at about the same time that it was brought to Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Spanish missionaries are also thought to have taken the other varieties from the Canary Islands (where they may have been introduced by French missionaries who had been to China), to the Caribbean, and to Central and South America.
The banana is, after all, an ideal food. At least one imaginative creationist has seriously suggested that its near-perfect design is evidence of God's existence.
It is ergonomically shaped to fit the human hand, with a non-slip surface. It has an outward indicator of ripeness—green, yellow and black. Its disposable wrapper has a tab at one end for removal and perforated edges for easy pealing. Add the fact that the banana has a pointed end and curved shape for easy entry into the mouth, and who could argue that it was indeed an act of divine inspiration?
Banana tree showing vegetative shoots
growing spontaneously; each one can
become a new banana tree.
More seriously, however, the banana represents the fine line between life, misery and death for millions of people. "You have to understand how fundamentally important the banana is to many parts of the world," says James Ferguson, a renowned historian of the Caribbean. "They are an absolute lifeline for poor communities across the world. You can grow a plant outside your house and it's a reliable source of carbohydrates. They are especially good in hurrican-prone countries because they can be grown from nothing to bear fruit in just nine months."
The advent of mass refrigeration in the early 20th century meant it became economically viable to export the fruit from the "banana republics" of the tropics to the United States and, later on, Europe. The banana became a symbol of post-war prosperity, being a much sought-after fruit during and after rationing. Bananas were also the first thing East Germans wanted to buy after the Wall came down in 1989.
These days, European countries alone munch their way through about 2.5 million tons of bananas each year. About 7 percent of this trade comes from the Caribbean, thanks to special trading relations that date back to colonial times. The remaining trade is largely with Latin America, where U.S. multinational interests are able to afford chemical fertilizers and pesticides that help produce bigger, cheaper, but less environmentally sound bananas.

Banana Wars
The dessert banana, which accounts for less than 15 percent of global production, has recently been the focus of a bitter trade war between the United States and Europe. American interests in Latin America wanted the European Union to loosen its relationship with the Caribbean. An all-out banana war was only averted this year (2001) when the E.U. promised to change its quota system, which favored the Caribbean, by 2006.
But talk of banana wars mean little to the millions of people who see the banana and plantain as an essential part of their everyday diet rather than an after-dinner treat. "More than a popular snack, bananas are a staple food that many African families eat for every meal," says Dr. Frison of Inibap. Rich in vitamins A, C and B6, bananas also contain high levels of calcium, potassium, and phosphorus.
For the past 30 years, however, Black Sigatoka, has been undermining this rich source of sustenance. The fungus has now spread to almost every banana-growing region in the world and typically reduces yield by between 30 and 50 percent.
Commercial varieties of bananas rely extensively on repeated spraying, sometimes drenching the crop up to 50 times a year. This is about ten times greater than the average amount of agrochemicals used on intensively grown crops in industrialized countries.
Unraveling the genes on each of the banana's 11 chromosomes might reveal a genetic solution to the problem of disease, Frison says: "If we can devise resistant banana varieties, we could possibly do away with fungicides and pesticides altogether."
Tapping the genetic variety of the wild, sexually active varieties of the plant may help to maintain the "top banana" status of the fruit.
It is a long way from the time when Alexander the Great was said to have been the first European to discover the banana, when he witnessed Indian sages eat a yellow, crescent-shape fruit suspiciously resembling the modern-day wonder. Improving on nature, however, is what the banana has relied on for it phenomenal success and ubiquity.

Where would we be without the banana? And, equally, where would the banana be without us?

Copyright 2001 The Independent—London - To whom I am deeply indebted

Banana Nutrition?

To be honest, there's not a lot

Essential amino-acids of plantain, cassava, sweet potato, cocoyam, yam and cowpea

Source: FAO, 1970.

Utilizable protein in some staple foods (percentage of calories)

Source: Payne, 1969.

Number of persons a hectare of crop can support per day
In terms of different nutrients

Source: Villareal, 1970

What's wrong with Nutrition Charts

You can prove almost anything with statistics, and this kind of table is no exception. You can grow a whole lot of camote in a small field (or even more rice) – bananas need space, but they will grow almost anywhere on the most marginal of lands. And they need virtually no ‘cultivation’, no labour, no fertilisers, no irrigation, nor any of the other inputs needed for ‘staple’ crops. So the input for bananas should really be matched and compared with the output - as a really 'economical'crop it would compare very favourably indeed with, say rice or wheat.

You can grow bananas as a monoculture, but you can’t harvest them mechanically – you still need the Harry Belafontes of this world to pick them and load them, so they cannot be a major automated crop, like wheat or soy beans, easily put on the world commodities and futures markets, and easily swamped by the West’s agro-industries.

This table (and the others) compares staple carbohydrate foods as if they were eaten in the same quantities, with the same amount of preparation and farming input, and ignore the protein foods normally eaten with them.

Why So Many Pacific Islanders Are Obese Alcoholics

Although Pacific peoples seem to be genetically predisposed to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and gout (Baker 1979), the main cause of the increase of these diseases today seems to be the shift to a diet of imported, highly refined foods from a diet of fresh foods high in fibre, vitamins, and minerals and low in sugar, salt, animal fats, and refined carbohydrates. A diet based on imported, highly refined foods is the reverse - as well as containing carcinogenic food additives. Table 3 is an attempt to assess the degree of correlation between these dietary changes and the major nutritional and nutritionrelated disorders. Cigarette smoking, increasing alcohol consumption, and decreasing physical activity are also contributing factors to the rising incidence of such diseases (Coyne 1984; Thaman 1983a).

The fresh fruits, nuts, vitamin-rich green leaves, derived juices, and complex-carbobydrate-rich and fibre-rich staple foods such as bananas, breadfruit, and even coconut (which has no animal fat or cholesterol, and the high Pacific-islander consumption of which does not seem to be correlated with the increase in any of these diseases, except possibly gout and hyperuricaemia) are exactly the types of foods needed to stem the Pacific's dangerous nutritional transformation. These foods also constitute the traditional snacks, drinks, and supplementary foods that are now being replaced by soft drinks, candy, and other modern but nutritionally-poor processed foods. Source

RP Comment: Most of the above comments apply to pampered island natives from American, French, or British colonies in the South Seas, where Coco-Colonisation has been most successful, or, as in a few tragic cases, where bird-shit (guano) has been found or somebody in Washington, London, or Paris has decided to try out a few nuclear arms. 
My island is quite different; so isolated that hardly any Spanish or Americans ever came there, and the only direct foreign occupation was by Japanese in WWII, who behaved themselves and were welcomed. There are no obese natives here (except for Jade, who is ginormous, and probably has sumo genes).

 Table 3 Degree of correlation between the increasing incidence of major nutritional and nutrition-related disorders and dietary changes (increasing and decreasing consumption of specified nutrients or substances)

Source: Adapted from Thaman 1983a.

+ + + Very high positive correlation (i.e., a major determinant). + + High positive correlation (i.e., a significant determinant). + Some positive correlation (i.e., a complicating factor). - Not significant, no correlation, or a negative correlation. ? No data.

Source

Don’t Waste Anything !

Puso ng saging, the banana flower, makes a delicious salad. Weighing about half a kilo, each flower can easily provide a salad for quite a large family, and are almost free; there are so many bananas around that anyone can take them from ‘the wild’.
They're somewhat like an endive (chicory). You take off the outer husk;  then just slice them; they’re crisp and delicious.


They’re also very sexy. It’s no coincidence that Georgia O’Keeffe, the doyenne of flower painters, who could paint any flower into an erotic dream, drew, in 1933, with charcoal only, the four sketches which illustrate this section. (I have added a picture by her of a tobacco flower; not because it has anything to do with bananas, but because it perfectly shows her ability to turn a humble flower into a sex-bomb).

Then there’s the ubod – the core of the banana tree stem. Each tree has about 10 kilos of core, about the consistency of potato; again, you can eat it raw, or cooked like potato. It is so common, though, that most people use it as a basic pig food.

To grow a new banana tree, all you need is one of the suckers that grow out from the base stem of the parent tree. Cut it off, plant it in damp ground, and forget it until you are ready for harvest. Some of our local bananas, like pelipita or paguha, have seeds about the size of a peppercorn that can be sown to produce a tree.

And, of course, the leaves make perfect dishes or place mats; or even umbrellas in the rainy season. The background to this web page is a banana leaf.

And there's more - I make jewellery from this plant - wait and see some more pictures.

Richard Parker December 2004

Back to Coconut Studio Home Page