Date: 16 August 2010
Everything banana! It is not too much to say that this fruit has changed human history profoundly. Prehistoric migrations can be traced by the similarity of words used for banana in vastly separate regions. It is, and has been, the staple food of East Africa, eaten at every meal; failure of the crop equals starvation. There are two horror stories: the great banana companies and the evil use that they made of Latin American countries, those that we called ‘banana republics’, and the biological threats to the banana. Lots of light trivia to balance the nasty stuff.
cao