Are Bananas Really Worth the Calories?

5/5 experts say yes.

Bananas Illustration by Lon Tweeten for TIME 

Last year, a zoo in the U.K. attracted international attention when it banned bananas from its primates' cages. The reason? According to a zoo spokesperson, they're too sugary for monkeys, too caloric, and they could give rise to health problems like type-2 diabetes.







It has other perks, too. "Bananas are one of the most versatile and important world foods," says professor James Dale from Australia’s Queensland University of Technology. It's some of the hardiest, producing fruit year-round in good conditions and resilient for long periods when rains don't come. To help combat vitamin A deficiencies in poor children around the world, Dale is part of a team, backed by millions from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, that's genetically engineered a banana to deliver alpha- and beta-carotene, which turns into vitamin A in the body.

Bananas' popularity have a problem worth considering. There's just one variety in the world that's widely grown: the Cavendish, says Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. "The monoculture turns forests into factories, and means that bananas are very susceptible to disease, requiring lots of damaging pesticides to sustain the crop," he says. "At the same time, bananas are the cheapest fruit in the supermarket. Maintaining these prices often means paying workers very little, which has led to violent suppression of attempts to expand worker benefits."


With apologies to the banana-deprived primates at the zoo, the verdict for humans is clear.

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