You know that moment when you think you understand the situation, and then, instantly, you realize everything you thought of this world is incorrect. What you were so sure of just a moment ago seems like a blind and ignorant observation made by a past self you hardly recognize. The way you see the world suddenly shifts, and this all comes in a flash, or sometimes, a splash…
That’s the only way I can describe the epiphanic moment that started all of this. A sharp sudden enlightenment that I had taken something in this world totally for granted until that very instance.
Lets take a step back.
Some hippie friends of mine were staying with me, and as we were eating breakfast, I mentioned I like to eat some fruit every morning. One of them immediately followed that casual statement with a surprising question “So John, What’s the best fruit?”
I have no idea why he asked me that. I’m not some fruit connoisseur. My first reaction was to brush it off. “Best” depends on what you care about. Taste, nutrition, price, availability both regionally and seasonally. You can make a case for almost anything; it’s too subjective. But just then, as shocking realizations sometimes do, it came to me instantly, the light bulb turned on, my world shifted. There really is a best fruit! And the more I thought about it, the less subjective the answer felt.
Only one fruit is consistent in every way. It’s there all year, at every grocery store, and you never get a bad one. It’s super affordable. It doesn’t need washing, plastic containers to transport, or even a bag. And it’s packed with nutrients.
Oh my god… there is a best fruit!
It’s the banana.
At that moment, I left my old self behind, and entered a new era of enlightenment.
On Average Bananas are about one third the price of other fruit.
| Fruit | Avg Price per lb (USD) |
|---|---|
| Bananas | ~$0.52 |
| Apples | ~$1.52 |
| Oranges | ~$1.30–$1.50 |
| Pears | ~$1.60–$1.80 |
Source: USDA ERS retail price data (scanner-based grocery data)
Almost nothing is as consistent as a banana. You can walk into any grocery store, any time of year, and know exactly what you’re getting. Same taste, same texture, same experience. Apples vary. Berries are bitter in the off season. Oranges can be hit or miss. But bananas are a hit every time (or a miss every time if you hate bananas, but consistent nonetheless.)
Nutritionally, they hold their own. Potassium, fiber, vitamin B6. Not a superfood in the trendy sense, but effective. It’s not that bananas are the best at any one thing. It’s that they’re good at everything. And when you stack all of that together, they start to look less like just another fruit… and more like something extraordinary. So why are bananas this good, this cheap, and this consistent all year, all over the country?
The answer starts with their origin.
Almost all bananas come from a handful of tropical regions near the equator, primarily in Latin America. Countries like Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala produce massive quantities, year-round, in climates where bananas thrive. That consistent climate at the source is the first piece of the puzzle.
Then there’s the supply chain.
Bananas are one of the most optimized food distribution systems in the world. Large companies like Dole Food Company have spent decades refining every step, from how they’re grown to how they show up on a shelf. It starts at harvest. Bananas are picked green, long before they’re ripe. Unripe bananas are firmer, less prone to bruising, and easier to handle and transport at scale. From there, they’re cleaned, sorted, and packed within hours, then loaded into refrigerated containers at around 55°F. The cold slows ripening almost to a stop, allowing them to travel for several weeks by ship without ripening or spoiling.
Once they arrive in the U.S., bananas are sent to ripening facilities where they’re exposed to ethylene gas, a natural plant hormone that restarts the ripening process. This turns green bananas yellow in a controlled, predictable way, allowing suppliers to time exactly when they’re ready for store shelves.
In Summary, Bananas are picked green, shipped cold, and ripened on demand so they show up exactly when and how you expect. The result is a fruit that can travel across the world and still feel local.
There’s also a reason they all look and taste the same. The bananas you buy are almost all the same variety, called the Cavendish. They’re clones. Not similar, not “basically the same.” Genetically identical. That uniformity makes them more predictable to grow, ship, and sell at scale. It’s a system built for consistency. But this system has a weakness that could wipe out bananas almost overnight, Again.
The banana people used to eat, the Gros Michel, was wiped out in the mid-20th century by a fungal disease. The fungus spread easily because those bananas were clones. Genetically identical. One weakness, shared by all of them. The Cavendish replaced it, largely because it could resist that disease. But today’s bananas are grown the same way. Still clones. Still extremely vulnerable to a single disease. What makes them so efficient is also what makes them vulnerable. If a new disease shows up, there’s not much standing in its way of total Bananahilation.
Bananas are consistent, cheap, widely available, easy to eat, packed with nutrients and one of the most globally available foods in the world.
So… is the banana the best fruit?
I say, Yes!
