tictac2In South Korea, some stores carry "one a day" bananas which are packaged in order of ripeness
TheSpookiestUserFantastic idea, but did they need to use plastic packaging?
of course, because you’re not allowed to have perfect.
MortyMcFry 🇦🇺Plus the waste of the all the bananas that don’t look perfectly the same
They even wrap single apples in plastic in Korea. The environmental thinking is slowly adapting though.
We need this in north america
teft's transporter cloneNo, we don’t. Just buy a damn bunch of bananas and skip the added plastic.
One thing that shocked me about living in Asia was the amount of plastic and individually wrapped fruit...sometimes double or triple-packaged.
You will even occasionally buy a pack of Oreos and inside the package, each Oreo is individually wrapped. I don't know why it's so normal to use so much plastic.
This was in Singapore btw - the country that's supposed to be 'green' by 2030.
When Singapore announced it would be getting rid of one-use plastic bags, there was a huge uproar. My colleagues at the time would ask how they are supposed to carry groceries back home. When I mentioned they can bring a reusable bag, they were like "It's so much trouble to carry bags to the store when they can just provide them!"
Of course, not everyone had this mentality, but the people against this new policy pretty much said the same word for word.
Not to mention, there are ZERO composting programs in Singapore. Maybe you can find one mom-and-pop shop that has a compost box where you can bring your waste, but again - most people don't drive, and bringing your trash on public transport definitely won't fly.
I hope they reach the green goal by 2030, but they have a LOT of work to do in the next 6.5 years...
I didn’t mean the plastics I just meant being able to buy bananas of varying ripeness
somedaysoonWhere do you shop? Every grocery store I go to has bananas of varying ripeness. Many even seperate them out from green to ripe on the stands.
Idk I go to a few different stores, freshco, save on foods, superstore
The bananas are always in bunches
Yes but usually bananas are charged by weight so you can even split and take half a good bunch and half a green bunch..
It’s okay to split up the bunches, if I only want a few I’ll grab two ripe ones and two green ones.
That’s fair, I’ve never thought about it like that before
The plastic is not an essential part of this product.
IzzyI normally find there are plenty of green and yellow bananas. Grab a few of each and just eat them in slightly non-optimal ripeness. I don’t think you can really gauge a bananas ripeness down to the day anyway.
LucidlethargyYeah, this is true. I feel like those would all ripen at about the same time. You can guess pretty well, but they often seem to ripen together.
Also, they didn’t wrap the stem. Those will ripen quickly, now.
I wonder if they might actually be combining them from different deliveries. IE, they grab an average ripeness one from the Monday delivery, an average ripeness one from the Tuesday delivery etc and by the time the last delivery is added the first one is about ready to eat.
gonI mean, that is mildly interesting, but it’s so fucking silly. So unnecessary…
Seriously… Just pick the exact ripeness of each one in any store where I live. Mix and match, it’s totally, 100% socially acceptable to do this.
You can’t buy individual bananas in many places in my country.
I’m not buying three bunches of bananas, each at different stages of ripeness. That’s a ridiculous amount of bananas.
You can’t? Are fruits/produce not sold by weight over there?
Yeah you might weigh the bunch of bananas at the checkout, but you won’t find many individual bananas at most supermarkets.
You might see individual pieces of fruit sold with lunch meal deals (sandwiches, drink fruit etc) but not in the regular grocery section.
Over here you can just rip the bananas you want from the bunch. They don’t care about bunches, just the weight of the fruit.
So this is interesting… if you see a bunch of bananas, you’re not allowed to break one off? Here in the United States, it’s totally acceptable to do this. You can straight up go around and pull one banans off of 7 different bunches, and nobody will even look at you funny.
Yeah this would cause mayhem here!
██████████[mildly infuriating]
putting bannas in a plastic shell 🗽🇺🇸👍👍😎
Except… it’s South Korea 🤷🇰🇷👍👍🤗
Potato potato. South Korea is the most americanized country in Asia by far.
I can’t tell which banana is for scale. Plaese halp
Classy HatterJust buy bananas that are of the ripeness you like and put them in the fridge. They’ll easily last a week or two and tastes better too (my opinion). Place them in some kind of container (plastic bag will do) when you store them in fridge and they’ll probably last a month if not more (I wouldn’t know, I always eat them sooner). Oxygen causes the shell to turn brown, and when the shell is brown enough, it will start to ruin the insides.
This is what I do. People have gotten so used to commercially produced unripe fruit that they get turned off by actually ripe fruit. I had a friend think my bananas were going off because they smelled what a ripe banana is supposed to for the first time in their life. This person was 34 years old.
This is a great idea
Capitalism breeds innovation
And plastic waste.
I desperately need them to swap positions of the two bananas on the left.
NepentheI need them to flip the whole thing. Green bananas are best bananas, and you use the ones that have overripened in your chartreuse-fueled negligence to hastily make banana bread in an effort to excuse yourself. Repeat forever.
Then you would LOVE the grocery store were I live. You can choose between green, green and green bananas, I haven’t seen them sell a even slightly yellow one for years, even the greenest one here is to yellow.
Have you ever had the chance to try plantains? They’re a bit like bananas but for cooking and while they can be used yellow, generally they are used green.
I think I've had them once or twice and found them ok? But that was eating them like a banana. If they're more intended for cooking, that may influence my opinion..
Yeah they’re only ever really used cooked. (I gather that they aren’t nearly as nice to eat raw and might make your stomach a bit upset if eaten raw but possibly are not actively bad for you like eating a raw potato is.) Cooked they’re pretty nice. Kinda like if a banana thought it was a potato.
Screak42because we all know that the banana does not already grow in the perfect packaging.
so it’s a yeah-na-na-na-na-na-na banana?
Fantastic idea, although doesn’t seem to compensate their 69h week work
Move to lemm.eeIncredibly wasteful
irotsomaYou can do the same in some stores. They put out some ripe and some unripe. Just grab a couple of each. And don’t fall for the guilt of breaking up bunches. You are allowed to do that. You don’t have to buy the whole bunch. Unless you go to a store that unnecessarily puts then in plastic containers/wraps.
Washing a banana? Ive never do e that. And I eat a lot of bananas.
Only because I like to avoid getting herbicides and pesticides on my hands which then might touch the banana flesh when pulling out the last part. I don’t use soap, but some do. I rinse all of my fruits and veggies when possible even if I remove the peel.
That’s next level fear. I’d imagine it would be extremely trace amounts if any that you’d end up digesting.
Yeah, but over time the damage builds up. Some of the currently popular pesticides are linked to both chromosome damage and neurological degeneration which are both cumulative.
Sure the chances of that alone causing cancer or something like Parkinson’s disease are very low. But there are lots of things around us that have similar effects. Off gassing plastics on new furniture and clothing, heavy metals in water and food, certain diseases like COVID, radiation for airplane rides and x-rays, etc. Each on of those are minuscule alone, even over a lifetime, but together they can cause issues. So things that are easily avoidable, may as well avoid. Pesticides and herbicides are mostly water soluable, so a little water can reduce the exposure significantly. And a lot of products that have peels that most people don’t eat and aren’t in the ground, so they don’t get dirty, don’t get rinsed by the growers. Some grocery stores do rinse them to make them more presentable, but not all.
Still you’re right that the only way to get toxic exposure that alone could cause cancer, Parkinson’s, etc., is if you work in the fields and aren’t given a mask. Especially if they are spraying while people are out picking. And with grocers often rinsing them, it’s not necessary.
It does also reduce your likelihood of catching COVID or other diseases from people who don’t know how to wash their hands, which we found from COVID is disturbingly common for an educated country. But again, that risk is very low.
I just feel the effort is minimal, and the possible reward is high enough that it’s worth it for me. It’s of course also a privilege of living in a place where clean water is plentiful.
Confirmed: Woody Allen is on Lemmy.
Just like me trying to avoid sweeteners for decades now because I suspect they might turn out to be bad for you (and noone has ever tried to suggest they are actively good for you…) If it turns out you’re wrong, you’ve lost very little, if it turns out you’re right then there’s no way to retroactively undo the harm.
I have a fairly sensitive sense of taste and if I eat an unwashed fruit with a rind and manage to touch the actual fruit without washing my hands after touching the rind, I can often taste a bitter chemical flavour that otherwise isn’t there. How harmful those chemicals may be and how exposed I’d be without directly transfering them to the food to my mouth I’m unsure (and, tbh, while I always wash oranges and stuff, I often eat bananas unwashed as there’s no need for the outside to come into direct or indirect contact with the actual fruit itself.) I’d still prefer to just not eat whatever it is if I can trivially avoid it (both for possible safety reasons and just not having my food taste like bitter chemicals reasons.)
I’m pretty sure its a general health recommendation to wash all your fruits, ubcluding the ones you have to peel.
I skin the whole banana at once to eat it.
You can’t buy individual bananas in many places in my country. They’re usually sold but the bunch.
Which would mean I’d need to buy multiple bunches which is just a ridiculous amount of bananas.
kapx132Hear me out, what if bananas had some sort of natural protection that would be crazy right?
In a perfect world
Stop your daydreaming and get back to work!
Marxism-FennekinismThey’d ripen faster in open air too. This whole packaging fruit trend is just stupid.
Unless it’s for accessibility. There are some niche prepackaged fruits specifically for people with arthritis and other mobility issues that actually can’t reasonably peel fruit, but these aren’t even peeled so obviously it’s not for that.
They’d ripen faster in open air too.
I’m not sure if that’s true as afaik bananas release some sort of heavier than air gas that causes both themselves and lots of other produce to ripen faster. The more airflow the less banana gas.
Maybe I’m just shooting for the moon, but what if that natural packaging was biodegradable and could be easily peeled off of the fruit? I know, I’m asking for way too much now.