[BipolarBob]

The breed of bananas we eat today are not the kind we ate when we were kids.

[Red Badger]

There were Red bananas for sale when I was a kid in grocery stores. Now it’s only in specialty places like Whole Foods.................

[Fungi]

Back in the 1950s, the most popular banana cultivar, called the Gros Michel, was wiped out by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, f. sp.cubense . Apparently, this banana was much tastier but when it was wiped out, growers were forced to use the now-standard (and blander) Cavendish variety. Researchers are trying to breed a new resistant Gros Michel to replace the Cavendish if it does get wiped out.

[pepsi_junkie]

The old bananas from the 50s were a variety called Gros Michel (Big Mike) and they got a blight. They are rare now, you can still find them if you feel like trekking into the jungle to find them but mass production is impossible because of the blight. The ones they replaced them with were a type called the cavendish banana and it was considered a “junk banana” meaning it lacked flavor. But it had the most important characteristics, it could be grown on existing plantations as-is and it could withstand long shipping times without spoiling quickly, which the old good bananas could also do but most could not. So we now have the junk banana. I was born after the old ones went away so I never had them. I’ve sometimes wondered if banana flavored candies are somehow reminiscent of them because they taste nothing like modern bananas.

[muir_redwoods]

One of the reasons artificial banana flavor is such a poor match for today’s banana is it was developed for an entirely different variety of banana.

[blam]

"The breed of bananas we eat today are not the kind we ate when we were kids."

That's correct.