Banana is a versatile food and easy to include in your diet. It has a mild flavor that is subtly sweet (when not overripe), with a creamy texture that most people enjoy. Bananas are super portable too: just carefully throw on into your knapsack, purse, or gym bag for a healthy on-the-go snack that comes in its own packaging!

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The banana plant can grow in height to between 10 and 26 feet or 3 and 8 meters, and belongs to the same family as the lily and orchid. One larger cluster of fruit can contain anywhere from 50 to 150 bananas in total with smaller groupings, or bunches, numbering around 10 to 25 bananas. There are a few main species that account for all varieties of bananas: the sweet banana (Musa sapienta, Musa nana), and the less sweet, starchier plantain banana (Musa paradisiacal). While more commercialized bananas have yellow skins, banana skins can also have red, pink, purple, and black tones when ripe

Bananas can be a part of any healthy lifestyle

11 reasons to include more bananas in your diet:

  1. Bananas taste great! If not overripe, they’re mildly sweet, with a creamy texture.
  2. Bananas, as everyone knows, are a great source of potassium. Potassium helps to maintain a healthy blood pressure. We need about 5 times as much potassium as we do sodium. Try to increase your intake of potassium, too, rather than just focusing on lowering your intake of sodium.
  3. Bananas contain notable amounts of magnesium, manganese, and beta and alpha carotenes – essential nutrients for a healthy body.
  4. Bananas are naturally sodium free.
  5. Bananas are a good source of dietary fiber. One large banana has 3.5 g, or 9 to 14% of the recommended daily dietary fiber intake. Added to a bowl of oatmeal or bran cereal, and you’ve got a great high fiber meal.
  6. Prebiotics, a type of fiber that acts as food to nourish the healthy bacteria in our gut, are abundant in bananas. Healthy gut bacteria help to improve digestion, stimulate the immune system, and help to prevent the bad bacteria from over-growing. Bananas are rich in a type of prebiotic called fructo-oligosaccharides.
  7. Bananas are relatively low in calories. A large banana has about 120 calories, a medium about 100 calories.
  8. Bananas are easy to use. They make a super easy addition to any breakfast: sliced on top of oatmeal, blended into a protein shake, mashed and used in muffins or quick breads, sliced over pancakes, sliced on to yogurt or cottage cheese, or on top of almond butter and toast.
  9. Bananas are convenient. They can be easily thrown into a purse, knapsack, or gym bag and eaten as a snack or as part of a lunch.
  10. Bananas pair nicely with peanut butter, a staple sandwich for both kids and adults around the world. But why not shake up your routine? Instead of peanut butter, why not make a sandwich using almond butter, cashew butter, or even sunflower seed butter?
  11. Bananas are safe enough to be part of a baby’s first food.

Storage tip: Keep overripe bananas in the freezer for future use. They can easily be thawed in the refrigerator and used to make banana bread or muffins, added to protein shakes or to vegetable-based smoothies with kale or spinach to add some natural sweetness. Consider picking up some discounted bananas at the grocery store; don’t be turned off by all the brown spots. Take home and simply store in the freezer to always have some on hand.

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Comments 15

  1. Hi, NanaJC1961. Whether or not you should eat potassium if you have kidney issues often depends in large part on how well your kidneys can filter out excess potassium – which can be checked with a routine blood test. Potassium is one of the key minerals with which a troubled kidney often has problems filtering adequately. I would suggest to talk with your doctor about your potassium levels, and if they warrant a low-potassium diet. If planned carefully, bananas can be part of a low-potassium diet, at the expense of other high-potassium foods (note that potatoes are even higher in potassium). If you would like more help with this, I suggest to post your query in the Community forum – I’m sure there are others who could benefit from the points you bring up.

  2. I used to work, as an engineer, on a reefer carrying bananas from South America to the US, we kept them at a temperature of 38 F at all times, doing this at home means storing them in the refrigerator the correct temperature is 38F storing food, not in the veggie or fruit drawers, just out on a shelf the fan disperses the air. You can keep them longer, they are stored in the dark and also prevents undesired brown spots etc etc. All in all a perfect storage in a even cellar temperature!

  3. I am so happy to hear the truth that Bananas do not cause blood sugar spike ! I love bananas and since I heard they cause your blood sugar to go up, I very seldom eat them because I am diabetic … So happy to know that I can eat bananas again.
    Thank you Doug for all of this information on bananas.

  4. @yoyoyumyum – i’m not sure if you mean you have high sodium levels in your blood or in your diet; regardless, for optimal health, we need a lot more potassium than we do sodium, about 5x as much potassium. If you don’t have any issues with your kidneys and/or if you’ve never been told by your doctor to limit potassium, then eating more potassium-rich foods while reducing your intake of sodium-rich foods, will help to improve your overall health: blood pressure, helping to prevent calcium loss from bones etc…

  5. Bananas don’t spike blood sugar levels, there are a lot of misconceptions and overly simplified statements out there. The fiber in whole fruits and vegetables help to slow down the absorption of carbohydrate in foods. There are no rules as to how many you can eat; the amount of food a person needs depends on their age, activity levels etc.

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