Bananas are considered a superfood and one of the most popular breakfast foods in America.
Bananas are a native tropical fruit grown in equatorial regions in Southeast Asia, India as well as the African and South American tropics and subtropics. There are two common cultivars, the sweet banana and the starchy plaintain, which is commonly used as a tropical staple food. Both varieties need to be ripened off the vine to be edible.
Overripeness
Bananas become very mushy when allowed to ripen past light brown, meaning that the starches inside the fruit naturally convert to sugar as they ripen. This is exploited to greater effect with plantains, as many cooks will wait until a plantain is black before peeling it and cooking it, as it will be extremely sweet without being mushy like the less hardy sweet banana varieties.
Mold
In some cases, brown bananas attract microbial fungi called molds that accelerate the decay of the skin of the banana. At this point, the bananas are considered inedible because this implies that the banana is now rotting. If a black banana has a light fuzz on it, it's been blackened by mold.
Chilling Injury
Chilling injury can damage the cell walls of tropical and subtropical plants and fruits that are meant to be stored at moderate temperatures with a certain amount of humidity. For this reason, many fruits, such as bananas, aren't flash frozen for transit to avoid cell damage. Cold temperature damage prematurely blackens banana skins.
Ethelyne Gas
Storing unripened bananas in the refrigerator also activates the hormonal action in the fruit that releases ethylene gas, which ripens fruit. Other fruits are placed in paper bags and bowls with bananas to encourage ripening, as bananas produce more ethylene gas than any other fruit. This is the chemical catalyst for turning a banana from green to yellow to brown to black.
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