Happy National Banana Lover’s Day!

Forget Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, and that Ho-Ho-Ho guy.  Did you know today is National Banana Lover’s Day?! For realz.  

Heckayeah, baby! Before slipping into your favorite banana costume and heading off to work to celebrate,  here’s some great banana trivia from our friends over at Chiquita:

• Did you know there are ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs that depict people with bananas?
• Bananas have been around as early back as 6th century B.C. (this is when they were first mentioned in literature)
• Miss Chiquita first appeared on the famous banana labels in 1963.
• Did you know there is a museum in Auburn, Washington dedicated to bananas? It’s called the Washington Banana Museum.
• The banana plant reaches its full height of 15 to 30 feet in about one year. The trunk of a banana plant is made of sheaths of tightly overlapping leaves.
• Did you know bananas, apples & watermelons float in water?
• You can use the inside of a banana peel to polish patent leather shoes.
• The average American eats 27 pounds of bananas each year!
• A man in India once ate 81 bananas in a half an hour.
• Bananas don’t grow on trees. They’re actually a giant herb.
• Bananas are one of the few foods to contain the 6 major vitamin groups.
• If you peel a banana from the bottom up you won’t get the string things.
• Those stringy things are called phloem (pronounced FLOM).
• The word banana comes from an Arab word “banan” meaning finger.
• An individual banana is called a finger. A bunch of bananas is called a hand.
• The scientific name for banana is musa sapientum, which mean fruit of the wise men.
• Bananas are a very rich source of vitamin B6, which your brain needs to function properly and make you wise.
• The phrase “going bananas” was first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary because of the banana’s connection with monkeys.

Note from Kirsten: If you separate the bananas when you get them home from the grocery, they don’t ripen as quickly. Nifty, eh?

PEEL ON BABY! – Kirsten