"bananas" news and stories

Dole has increased its banana imports to Japan by more than 25%, yet there's still a shortage of the fruit in this island nation. So what's the reason behind this sudden spike in demand? A fad known as the Morning Banana Diet. It's so popular that one young woman has been waiting to start the diet for a month because her local OK Store is always out of bananas.

The run on bananas began last month when former opera singer Kumiko Mori who weighs more than 200 pounds announced on the television show Dream Press-sha that she lost 15 pounds on the Morning Banana Diet. After the show aired there was a 70 to 80 percent increase in banana sales versus last year at supermarkets run by Life Corp.

The regimen itself is pretty simple: Allow yourself as many bananas and room temperature water for breakfast; eat anything you like for lunch, 3 p.m. snack and dinner; stop eating by 8 p.m. and get to bed before midnight. It's the brainchild of Osaka pharmacist Sumiko Watanabe who designed it to increase the metabolism of her husband, Hitoshi, who lost 37 pounds. There's even a web site for the diet. It appears to be down right now, but this amusing video describing how the diet works complete with a techno version of The Banana Boat Song is still working.

This isn't the first time a fad diet has caused shortages in Japan. Last year the natto diet stripped supermarket shelves of the funky, slimy fermented soybeans. Who knows whether either of these diets works, but a morning banana beats natto any day.

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Food manufacturers are always looking for ways to improve the nutritional content of their products, as well as ways to lower the calories. Scientists may have found a new way to do just that with an innovative new ingredient: banana flour.

They've developed a flour from unripe bananas, and adding it to pasta has been one of the first applications. Pasta makers have experimented with adding other ingredients, but everything they've tried so far makes the pasta shrink too much when it's cooked. Banana flour, on the other hand, doesn't seem to cause any additional shrinkage.

The banana flour looks promising for manufacturers. Not only does the new flour add antioxidants and tannins for a nutritional boost, it also boosts the amount of resistant starch by 12%. That allows the potential pasta to claim to be a lower glycemic index food because the resistant starch is not digestible and works in your system like insoluble fiber.

The pasta makers say that the results they've gotten with the banana flour yield a good quality product but that more testing is required regarding the taste of the product. So you may see banana flour as an ingredient in the future, but it may take a while for it to get there.

Sometimes some of the best and most worthwhile meals or treats are the ones that take no time at all. While there's nothing quite like a carefully prepared dish, it's also great to wow the tastebuds with simplicity. The above video, Green's Cuisine, has rejigged the Chinese treat toffee apples with deep-fried bananas into a super-quick and sugary treat. Sesame bananas are basically chopped bananas sprinkled with sesame seeds and then doused with a good drizzle of freshly made toffee syrup -- just a melted mixture of water and sugar.

This looks like the perfect dish for entertaining -- whether you're gathering together for a chat and want some munchies, or curling up with a good movie. Personally, I'd treat it like fondue -- prepare a nice, large pile and then give everyone skewers to pick up banana chunks as they wish. In fact, I'm thinking that the bananas on my counter won't be going into a smoothie after all...

I have a foodie confession: While I do like fruit, I almost never eat it in its full form. I try -- really I do. I buy fruit and eat some nibbles, but before I get to the rest, it inevitably goes bad and I have to either have to throw it into a smoothie pronto, or freeze it for a smoothie later. But that's not the case with my beloved banana.

Banana is the wonderful fruit that's good even when it's bad. The blacker and more shriveled that the skin is, the better it is for baking up a batch of banana bread. I picked some up a few weeks ago, with the best of intentions, but they went black before I could eat them. But they're bananas! So, no matter how hot my apartment was, I knew what I had to do.

As if that wasn't good enough -- recipes that allow you to make the most of fruit going bad -- banana bread is one of the easiest and most forgiving foods to bake. The above was whipped up half-assed. I doubled my recipe. I didn't level off my measurements. I smushed and mixed it all together in the end with a potato masher. But still, the end result was a nice warm cakey bread with a little bit of melting butter.

I've never considered myself a pudding person, as I'm not generally a fan of very soft or mushy foods. Bread pudding is wonderful, but pudding puddings always remind me of baby food or having my wisdom teeth. Recently, though, I've seen some very classy puddings pop up in the food blogosphere. Nothing gooey about them, they look sophisticated and absolutely delightful. Check some out:

Creamy and Cold Banana Pudding from Bakerella

Effortless Banana Pudding from Su Good Sweets

Steamed Lemon Pudding via Oh Joy

Real Butterscotch Pudding from Jumbo Empanadas

Banana Pudding Smackdown (reviews) from Mac & Cheese

Steamed Blueberry Puddings from Morsels and Musings

Banana Pudding Ice Cream from Joy the Baker

Rich Risotto Rice Pudding from Sticky, Chewy, Messy Gooey, via Hostess with the Mostess