Boys and Bananas

I’m bananas about bananas.  I became hooked on them as a child when my grandfather was ill and his doctor told him to eat a banana a day to help naturally boost his potassium levels.  My grandfather was a hardcore Nebraskan who lived a red meat and potatoes diet all his life.  His favorite appetizer was taking a slice of Wonder Bread and spooning three glops of sour cream on it and then eating the whole thing in a single swallow with the same glee a child wolfs down a donut.

I was fascinated by a study I read about bananas and the gender preference differential between men and women.

The article argued that women prefer to eat bananas that are slightly green while men prefer to eat bananas that are spotted brown.  The reasoning of the article was that women were attracted to the undone “tartness” of a green banana, while the men enjoyed the richer and sweeter spotted banana.

I find the banana study a wonderment because, when it comes to foodstuffs, men generally prefer to eat meat and such on the raw side while women tend prefer their meat and other edibles on that side of well-done.

In a non-scientific attempt to quantify and qualify the banana study, I have been observing the banana purchasing practices of men and women in grocery stores and the local Dunkin’ Donuts over the last few months — yes, I am not immune to the incredible Dunkin’ Donuts Summer deal of 99 cents for a large tea with lemon and no sugar; the small amount of caffeine intake be danged! — and here’s what I discovered:

Women buy green bananas and men buy spotted bananas.

I was surprised by that definitive finding.  In buying bunches of bananas at the grocery stores, women would always pick the all-green bananas while the men would pick the darker yellow bunches.

When you could buy a single banana at Dunkin’ Donuts, the results were the same:  Green Tinge = Female Purchaser and Spotted = Male purchaser.  In fact, one guy at Dunkin’ picked a brown banana only to have his girlfriend replace it with a green banana.  When he gave her a look, she replied, “The banana is for me, not you.”

In our home, the results are the same.  I hate the taste of a green banana and Janna Banana will eat green bananas all day long.  If a banana is even slightly dark yellow, Janna rejects the bananas and leaves them for me to devour in my grandfather’s name.  We Spotted Banana eaters are luckier in the banana bunch gender exchange because the fruit is always riper longer than it is raw.