I don't want to alarm you but bananas as we know them may be doomed Wow I kind of alarmed myself today I'm nutty history we're covering the banana panic the bananas we all eat in love may soon be wiped out entirely by a deadly fungus and scientists don't yet know how to stop it to understand this banana crisis we'll need to understand the history of bananas which is pretty bananas crossbreeding world travel civil rights uprisings military cooze the bananas story has more twists and turns than a cat attack dance hell basket killed her husband whacked
some of you may have heard the banana crisis news in the media a man into the streets screaming well there'll be plenty of time for that later the banana panic we've had other panics the 80s had the satanic panic that didn't turn out to be real the early 2000s had the mechanic panic when Earl my mechanic retired I had to find a new one and now the banana panic which is me mispronouncing a banana as I describe the banana panic a banana is a fruit and you've probably heard the definition of fruit as something like
a sweet fleshy product of a tree or plant that contains seeds wait hold up contain seeds where are bananas seeds almost all the bananas eaten around the world today are a type called the Cavendish banana named after William Cavendish sixth Duke of Devonshire fancy the Cavendish bananas have been crossbred to the point of virtually having no seeds at all when you cut into a banana and see those tiny black specks those are the seeds but those little seeds don't do anything you can't plant them to grow more bananas so where are all these Cavendish bananas
coming from they're clones instead of relying on reproduction growers transplant part of the plant stem essentially cloning the plant thus biodiversity is eliminated and there are acres and acres of the same organism which by the way is a sterile mutant freak so far sounds like a good plan right this lack of biodiversity makes it easier for corporations to scale up on a mass scale and put in place the machinations to ship bananas all over the world the problem though is this lack of biodiversity leaves them susceptible to diseases if something comes along that starts killing
bananas it's not like the strong banana survive and the weak bananas die there are no strong and weak bananas they're all the same bananas it would just kill all the bananas well guess what something came along and started killing all the bananas hello Fusarium wilt aka Panama disease this is that killer fungus I mentioned earlier Panama disease is capable of wiping out whole crops of bananas and can stay present in the soil preventing bananas from being regrown in that place it has already traveled from Asia to East Africa wiping out banana plantations in the Philippines
and growers are trying to keep it at bay before it gets to Latin America food scientists are working to make the Cavendish banana stronger to resist the threat of Panama disease through genetic modification and crossbreeding but it's a little hard with that whole being sterile thing there is hope that the Cavendish can be crossbred with a wild seed producing banana berry a ttle from Madagascar that is resistant to Panama disease but the problem there is it's nearly extinct they can't really experiment on it until it's saved but this is all a little overblown right no
one is going to let bananas go extinct it's not like we're suddenly going to just change what kind of banana we're all eating right well maybe this has all been before Scot heavy in the 1950s people weren't eating the Cavendish banana they were eating a bigger Premier sweeter variety called the grouse Michael if you bought a banana at the market or grocery store before 1960 it was a gross Michael and word on the street is they were delicious you know how banana candy doesn't taste like bananas most of those flavor profiles were designed back in
the day and modeled after the gross Michael instead of the Cavendish crazy right I mean update your flavor profiles candy makers you've had 60 years to work on this so what happened to this tasty superior banana it was the first appearance of our little friend Panama disease Panama disease showed up and wiped the gross Michael out to levels where it was not commercially viable to mass-produce so the banana makers and banana marketers and banana bigwigs huddled together to come up with a replacement did they go with one that tasted similar no they went with the
one that looked most like the gross Michael and gambled that people would get used to the taste and it worked people kept buying bananas and the Cavendish replaced the gross Michael and the banana makers and the banana marketers and the banana bigwigs learned an important lesson about biodiversity just kidding we're here around 60 years later on the precipice of the exact same problem because they just put it off and ignored it big business what is up with all this biodiversity talk and crossbreeding and mixing one strain with another to create a new one well that's
how new plants are made and a long time ago that's how many of the fruits and vegetables we have today came and to exist in fact bananas are thought to be the first fruit humans cultivated let's go back shall we to the beginning of bananas bananas first appeared in written history in the sixth century BC but it's thought that they existed even before then as a small brown version of themselves in 8000 BC in Papua New Guinea different strains of the fruit were crossed bred to create versions with fewer and fewer seats it's good to
know that no matter how far back in history we go we are united as humans in our hatred of biting into things with lots of seeds it's nasty bananas unite us all [Music] there are depictions of bananas in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics they're sitting on Pharaoh's kitchen counter as he fixes the kids school lunches from their origins in Papua New Guinea traders and travelers took bananas across India to Africa in Polynesia there were references to bananas from 600 BC in Buddhist scriptures known as the Pali Canon referring to Indian traders traveling through the Malaysia bringing the
plants back with them and telling everyone won't you got it try it in 327 BC Alexander the Great invaded India tasted this unusual fruit then spread bananas further do you think he gave himself that nickname like one day he showed up and everyone was like hey Alexander and he said you know what I told you all that I was the greatest of all time by 280 bananas had spread to China according to the Chinese historian yang foo bananas only ever grew in the southern region of China they were never really popular until the 20th century
as they were considered to be a strange and exotic alien fruit kind of how I think of honeydew melon today you is that just me how dare you in 8650 it is believed that bananas finally got their name from Arab slave traders before that they were just called those things will call banana Sunday they were called banning which means finger in Arabic did these guys have long yellow delicious fingers what are those chocolate dipped Altoids yeah yes pannier it's called them Platanos as they resembled their native plane trees this led to the name plantain which
describes the banana genus overall but also the specific banana variety plantain the plantain varietal is typically used for cooking but when they're ripe they can be eaten raw like and have a starchy but sweet flavor the sweet tasting bananas we know today developed in Africa right around 650 ad as a result of crossbreeding two varieties of wild bananas the musa acuminata and the Musab alba Siana in the 15th century Portuguese sailors found bananas oft in West Africa and go about building banana plantations in the Canary Islands in 1516 those good old Spanish missionaries bring bananas
all the way to the Caribbean that's right it's hard to believe bananas weren't always there it just seems like it's been there forever like Mount Rushmore or my dad's wooden leg is my in 1600 encouraged by the success of bananas in the Caribbean Spanish settlers attempt to grow bananas in Florida it didn't work out because the bananas would not survive the winter frost nope so Florida stuck with orange you glad they didn't keep trying bananas fast forward to 1834 and mask banana production is ramping up just a side note we're only covering the banana history
here when we skip around hundreds of years they're still super important things going on in the world just no major banana events I just wanted to clarify in case you were looking for a world history video and we're watching this accidentally in thinking wow history sure is full of banana stuff no I wasn't I was just scratching my head not too much of a flash-forward this time as we travel to 1876 at the World's Fair in Philadelphia Pennsylvania it's there that Americans are first introduced to the banana Wow Philly gets everything first they get dibs
on bananas then they get gritty everything I tells you so of course bananas become the next big thing everybody's like hey yous guys heard about deez bananas and everybody else is like yeah we heard about those bananas and other people are like where do we get those bananas and everyone is going bananas for bananas so in 1885 the Boston Fruit Company rises up to meet the public demand for bananas and everyone's like yay bananas the Boston Fruit Company sounds a little regional and when you think of Boston fruit do you think of bananas no you
probably think of beans so the Boston Fruit Company changed their name to United Fruit that sounds better but it could still be stronger so eventually they changed their name again this time to Chiquita banana and I've come to say bananas have to ripen in a certain way you may recognize that as the sticker on your banana peel and with Chiquita banana we transition out of the history of bananas and into banana politics oh yeah we're about to get political you know how in polite company you're never supposed to discuss religion politics and the grave we're
about to break that third rule early on United Fruit Company bought 14 of its competitors assuring them of 80% of the banana import business in the United States they owned acres and acres of land in Latin America and in 1901 United Fruit actually took over some government functions in Guatemala this is where the term Banana Republic was going it's basically a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the exportation of a limited resource product but with a very stylish muted wardrobe for both men and women seriously have you seen Banana Republic Spring chinos this
year fabulous bananas are the number one fruit consumed in the US with apples a close number two in fact bananas are the fourth largest overall crop in the world right after we rice and corn one reason for that is when you go into a grocery store and look at the produce what is always the cheapest fruit bananas but how is this fruit that is only good for a few days and has to be shipped thousands of miles so cheap and how has it always been so cheap by the company controlling the cost of labor and
the cost of land by 1930 United Fruit has absorbed 20 rival firms and is now the largest employer in all of Central America they owned 3.5 million acres of land in Central America and the Caribbean and was the single largest landowner in Guatemala now this banana company had huge influence over the governments of small countries yeah banana republics but you know great Tina's there were banana strikes in Colombia in 1928 and in Costa Rica in 1934 which led to some workers rights and the formation of trade unions but there were still many people in these
countries that feared the influence that the one company had in 1951 J Kobo R Benz is democratically elected as the president of Guatemala after he runs on a platform of banana workers rights a year later the Guatemalan government began expropriating unused United Fruit Company land and giving it to landless peasants that really ticked off the United Fruit Company so the United Fruit Company starts to lobby the US government and accuses this democratically elected president of being the worst thing in the world a communist and the US government is like a commie is threatening our bananas
it ain't gonna happen so in 1954 they send CIA down to Guatemala to carry out a coup d'etat that outs the President and installed a pro-business military dictatorship led by this authoritarian guy Carlos Castillo Armas if this all sounds bananas to you it's because it is a few years later we go through a similar thing again this time it's 1961 and it's called the Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba and it's partially funded by none other than United Fruit in case you haven't gotten to this in your history class this one doesn't go quiet as
well who knew bananas could be so contentious even now we're just a few years removed from a trade war over bananas between the US and the European Union the EU used to buy from us own Chiquita then they decided to only buy from their former colonies then someone sued someone and they sued back and so on and so and the World Trade Organization got involved and finally after 20 boring years everything is resolved thank goodness because everyone loves bananas seriously they're everywhere is there any other fruit more prevalent in pop culture than the mighty banana
seriously tell me I want to know look at them they are funny-looking little guys aren't they bananas have a long tradition in comedy going way back to the days of vaudeville large raucous crowds and no microphones meant that sight-gags were heavily relied on it may be hard to grab a crowds attention with a well worded joke but everyone in that crowd instinctively knew what was coming when one person peeled the banana and threw the peel on the ground which just goes to show you people falling down okay not all people falling down are funny just
sometimes the old banana peel slip was said to have been started by vaudevillian sliding Billy Watson the gag actually had its roots in reality as tossing a peel was considered poor manners and the sign of a rude person back when bananas first came to the US 1880 Harper's Weekly admonished anyone who tossed their banana peels on the public walkway as this would likely result in broken limps in the book bananas an American history author Virginia Scott Jenkins describes how Sunday schools warned children that an improperly discarded peel would not only definitively lead to a broken
leg but that the person with the broken limb would inevitably end up in the poorhouse due to this injury in 1909 the st. Louis City Council completely outlawed throwing or casting a banana rind on public thoroughfares those vaudeville sight-gags made their way to silent films by the 1920s silent film era slipping on a banana peel was already considered a classic gag it was first shown on screen in the flirt with Harold Lloyd then with this film the high sign Buster Keaton took the gag to the next level the gag appeared over and over continuing to
heighten in the 1927 movie the Battle of the century Laurel and Hardy used the slip to lead to another classic routine a pie fight the banana gag is still used today any of you play Mario Cart as to whether or not it would really work well it depends on how many peels how slippery how rotten what kind of floor and it just depends on a lot of things the bottom line is if you try to see if you can legitimately slip on a banana peel whatever you do do not tell anyone you got the idea
from this video speaking of banana slugs that reminds me of banana splits the ice cream tree not the creepy HR Pufnstuf shell from the 70s that's another banana related thing that we shall never discuss again ever the banana split was invented in 1904 by David Evans Strickler a 23 year old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel pharmacy see pharmacies used to have soda fountain counters which served ice cream and you know what forget it if you're young just know it is a very different world the banana split consisted of a lengthwise split banana make sense two scoops
of ice cream at each end and a spoon of whipped cream in between with maraschino cherry on top with one end covered with chopped mixed nuts and another with chopped mixed fruits it cost 10 cents twice as much as other sundaes the tree proved so popular that Strickler eventually bought the pharmacy like I said it was a different time back then people weren't just eating bananas they were dancing with them Josephine Baker scandalized the public with her banana dance she caused a sensation in Paris in 1927 when she starred in the invent de Foley her
costume was only a short skirt of artificial bananas and a beaded necklace if you watch the footage you'll see that Josephine Baker actually invented twerking in the 20s in the 1940s singer Carmen Miranda took the Bananas off of the skirt and put them on her head she starred in several movies wearing a banana and fruit hat and singing a few banana based songs she also was the inspiration for the Chiquita banana girl not only did Carmen Miranda inspire the Chiquita banana girl she also inspired one of the greatest scenes in cinematic history take it away
Kevin that's right the minions themselves did the Carmen Miranda dance and the minions are obsessed with bananas these days besides mentions by minions the most famous bananas in pop culture are the ones in pyjamas and they're coming down the stairs so we don't need to get into them bananas don't just show up all the time in pop culture but they also have a weird habit of popping up in your room it seems like most of the time that cuckoo ant you never talk to except online sends you a fake news Facebook article about a fruit
causing something or curing something that fruit is a banana just a quick google of banana rumors and a dive into Snopes reveals that whatever is in the news someone inserts banana rumours remember the Zika virus the mosquito-borne illness that was the talk of the town during the Brazilian Olympic Games well did you know that bananas cause Zika no you didn't because of course that's not true it's just a false article with pictures of rotting bananas because rotting bananas look gross what about SARS yep bananas caused SARS no nope again bad article with pictures of gross-looking
rotting bananas they even got HIV in the mix come on I don't need to tell you this bananas don't cause HIV with kovat 19 it looks like bananas are going the opposite route because bananas cure coronavirus that is obviously not true but it's not gonna hurt to eat a few more bananas if you see an article posted saying bananas do this or that and your sisters boyfriends mom's dogs cousins gardeners ants whereas it's real check it out and research before you believe it okay speaking of the corona virus in Houston Texas officials declared that anyone
in public would have to wear a facial covering one new station used this graphic that reads masks scarfs bananas I'm pretty sure they meant to say bandana but that didn't stop people from posting pictures of them wearing their safety bananas they would go perfect with some springtime chinos from Banana Republic Wow the graphics person is a little rude I'm gonna have to talk to someone about that what yeah no I get it I am - don't worry I'm wrapping up so in conclusion bananas are popular we're right back where we start bananas have been bred
to be tasty treats they have a troubling ecological and political past the ones we eat or wiped out ones and they're on the verge of being wiped out again biodiversity is gaining popularity and other crops it's there when you hear terms like heirloom or heritage people are buying more and more diverse types of the fruits and veggies at farmers markets which could lead to greater acceptance of diverse crops all over if we keep having just a few companies that control a mutant mono crop then we will keep perpetuating this cycle this happened in the 1800s
when the British drank mostly coffee instead of tea they exported it from their colony in Sri Lanka but coffee rust wiped it out entirely and they had to switch to tea so we may have to drink tea instead of eating bananas more than 100 billion bananas are eaten every year across the world and in the u.s. Americans even average of 27 pounds of bananas per person a year 51 percent of those bananas are eaten at breakfast time I wonder if that staff means all of the bananas are just half way eating that breakfast if 27
pounds a year sounds like a lot to you check out Ecuador where residents eat an average of 218 pounds of bananas per person every year to be fair though there's like one guy named Big Mike that eats around 5,000 pounds by himself and really skews the staff India produces more bananas than any other country with 28% of the worldwide crop and China is number 2 with 10% have you heard of banana trees yeah it's not actually a thing those things we call banana trees are actually officially classified as an herb the world's largest herb sorry
uncle herb the title is not your herb these herbs are in the same family as lilies orchids and palms bananas grow in what are known as hands so called because of their appearance which make up the larger stock known as a bunch and about 75% of the weight of a banana is water and they float in water just like uncle herb athletes seem to love bananas and use them as a quick boost nutritionists however go back and forth on them while bananas are low in calories usually around 100 and they have little to no fat
sodium or cholesterol and are a good source of vitamin C potassium fiber and vitamin b6 they also contain about 27 grams of carbohydrates and 14 grams of sugar so some nutritionists recommend snacking on other fruits net I'm good with bananas so as scientists and growers create genetically different bananas to possibly replace the good old Cavendish and others work to genetically engineer Cavendish bananas with immunity to Panama disease and new crops are planted and grown from pathogen free lab grown plant stock will just keep eating our bananas marveling at their weird and wacky history and hoping
they'll be more to come this has been bananas do you like bananas hate bananas know something about bananas we missed let us know in the comments and watch more wacky history don't forget to Like and subscribe we'll be sure to answer your questions and address your banana concerns on the next video oh and before we get a million comments about how we missed it here's the back dance hit up the comments and let's talk about bananas [Music]
