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So recently our commercial kitchen got some bunches of bananas with a curious feature. On the inside they were firm and delicious (no jokes, please), on the outside they looked incredibly sickly. Specifically, they had this grey/green/brownish yellow with lots of black spots, some of them with depth.

Situational details: these are Cavendish bananas, and a weekend of ripening in the open air did nothing for them.

This got us curious about the mechanisms of banana ripening - it's clearly not as closely related to how good the banana is to eat as we previously thought! Can someone explain it more?

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closed as too localized by terdon, MattDMo, Mad Scientist Feb 5 '13 at 12:43


Check the situational details I just added. –  rsegal Feb 4 '13 at 19:45
Ah, not Canarian then. In any case, this question is not really on topic here as it has nothing to do with the underlying biology. I would suggest,however, that you have one half-opened banana, allowing your customers to see that the inside is fine despite the blemishes. If you place the peeled banana next to the others, your customers should see that they should never judge a banana from its peel! –  terdon Feb 4 '13 at 19:49
I couldn't find a cooking/culinary/restaurant .SE, so I posted it here as the most relevant field. –  rsegal Feb 4 '13 at 19:50
Yes, indeed, and you took pains to politely acknowledge the possibility of its not being on topic. My last comment was not a complaint. You could try your luck over at cooking.SE. –  terdon Feb 4 '13 at 19:57
@rsegal (can I recommend you change this question completely to ask "what are the mechanisms which cause fruit to ripen?" or something along those lines) –  rg255 Feb 4 '13 at 21:31

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