All right, so time for something kind of bizarre.
Bananas, originally they were grown from a seed.
Over time through human selection, we have found a way to produce seedless bananas and
all bananas out there in the world that we have and do not have seeds
they are made from cuttings.
Take that cutting you make another one and they're exact clones of each other.
Because everything is an exact clone of another, if one is susceptible to disease
that means it will wipe out all of them.
So an entire landscape filled with bananas can just go
crumbling down if a strain of disease hits it because there are no defenses.
So that's where the seeded bananas might be the way in the future.
If all the banana varieties without seeds get wiped out, which is not gonna happen, this would be a way of protecting it.
Now, you can already see that these ones look kind of different
I think this might be something to do with the fact that they have seeds. They are wider.
They're very, I mean, they're very stout and they're very wide
so there is a little more room in there to hold all those seeds.
What I'm finding is that these are actually very difficult to get off the hand, so I'm actually just gonna cut one off.
So I picked one that's like a little bit darker.
It's just to make sure that this is not going to be like super starchy or anything.
You know, some varieties of banana you want them to be completely black before you eat it
But this one... I'm gonna take my chances and get one that's a little bit darker
and hopefully they'll be a good middle ground.
And you already see you know, just how fibrous that that skin is. It's kind of like
It's kind of dry
peels off super easily
But it's
yeah, like look at
Look at those fibers, they're like big, thick
fibers that come apart when you wanna peel it.
So here is the fruit itself. You see it comes to a point there
and it's kind of like
ridgey looking
Now a lot of the seeded bananas out there in the world are ornamental
and most of the ornamental bananas
They don't have much of a flavor, but these were sold in the market...
If people buy these to eat maybe they cook with them.
Maybe they smash these and get those seeds out of there. I'm not sure.
They're most likely or not
Just taking a big bite out of it
So hopefully it's not too starchy. There you can see...
Look at that! Look at those little seeds.
That's pretty cool, right?
I mean, it's not going to be fun eating this thing.
It's a lot of seeds.
I didn't think this through. It's very hard to talk now.
It is sweet!
The flavor
is okay.
It's not starchy
I thought this might taste like an unripe banana or like a... like plantain or something
It doesn't.
It's got maybe like a little bit of a starchiness to it
But more like if you were to eat a banana that's not like, 100% ripe, but like pretty ripe
like slightly green Cavendish.
Those are all the seeds in there. That's what I got out of that one bite
25% of this banana is just seeds
Which makes it very difficult to eat, so I'm guessing that
You know, people buying these at the market are probably doing something with them. I think you could probably like
You could probably like separate out those seeds with like a strainer or something and then eat it
Maybe the woman just like saw these growing like wild and just like, picked them
and brought to market and just like didn't know that they had seeds that could be a thing, too.
You know, like that, that is truly possible
It was not terrible. It's sweet. It's just kind of bland
It tastes a little bit like if you've got like a Cavendish banana
That was like a little green still similar sweetness
Maybe a little less sweet, but mostly it's less flavorful. So texture on this is actually better than a Cavendish
It's got like nice, ehm...
I just took like a little bite out of it
'cause I'm kind of like, trying not to get into those seeds.
But you can see it's like pretty juicy. It's pretty dense and it's pretty creamy.
So it's not bad
But I can see how this would be better
Cooking with it
Doing something with it
Obviously not taking a bite out of it. There is a reason why we
Manipulated bananas as much as we have throughout history to be like they are today
But what's fascinating is that this is where it all started
bananas grow wild with seeds and they, you know, I think probably just like anything and
when we cultivated them we cultivated ones without those seeds and that is
Really fascinating. So I'm trying an ancestor, you know of the
Modern seedless banana that we have. That's pretty cool.
Hey, if you enjoyed this video and you want to get a little bit more information about this fruit
Then I actually wrote an article about it over on the website atlas obscura. You may have heard of atlas obscura
They're a fantastic resource about interesting places, and foods now, all around the world
They also have a youtube channel
Which I'll also link below where they talk about
Interesting places and foods and people so if you like what I'm doing you'll probably like that as well
They aren't a sponsor or anything, but I write for them and they're a friend of the channel
So if you like what I'm doing, I think you might like what they're doing too. Thank you so much. See you next time.