Bananas are the world’s most popular fruit after tomatoes. In western countries, they could account for 3% of a grocer’s total sales. Bananas consistently are the number one compliant of grocery shoppers. Most people complain when bananas are overripe or even freckled. The fact is that spotted bananas are sweeter, with a sugar content of more than 20%, compared with 3% in a green banana.As if fighting with their consumers over bananas was not enough, big retailers turned on each other. In 2002, Asda-Walmart fired the first, uhm, banana in a price war with Tesco. The guerrilla war would spill over into other battle grounds/shelves and is ongoing. Who else but to explain the story: Banana Link
The banana wars didn't begin or end there. The biggest banana complaint desk is the World Trade Organization (WTO). Starting in 1975 but eventually turning into the so-called six-year Banana War in 1991, the United States peeled the gloves off to go up against the European Union, whose citizens go ape for the yellow wonder. The EU imports more than 3 billion tonnes annually... but that let's than the US. The Banana War eventually spilled over into French cheese and Scottish cashmere trade disputes. This is not even half of the story. Both giants refused to turn yellow and although a white flag reached half-mast in 2001 and in 2005, no-one has come down their herb yet. (The banana plant is not a tree; it actually is a giant herb.)
Bananas obviously is no monkey business. The Banana Republics, obviously, was called such because of the hideous Banana Wars, starting in the 1920s, in which thousands of innocent people died needlessly in the so-called American imperialism effort. It is now known in fair detail how big banana firms sponsored right-wing militias.
To get to the root of the not-so-humble banana, take a bite at banana.com. Keep in mind, though, that, true to the banana tradition, some of the serving is spotted. Savor this: the banana is not the world's most popular fruit! That title belongs to what the French used to call "the apple of love" and the Germans "the apple of paradise," the mighty tomato.
