RED Bananas .... WTF???

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

But yes we have red bananas ...

What's this — red bananas?

By ESTHER ASHBY-COVENTRY - The Timaru Herald | 5:00AM - Saturday, 15 June 2013


EXTRA EXOTIC: Browne St Countdown store manager Mark Walker tastes a new product
to the supermarket, a red banana from Ecuador. — MYTCHALL BANSGROVE/Fairfax NZ.

COUNTDOWN SUPERMARKETS throughout the country started stocking the fruit about six weeks ago, adding a colourful flourish to the standard sea of yellow in the banana section.

Yellow bananas sell for about $2.99 a kilogram while the flaming red variety from Ecuador — known as claret, Jamaican or red Cavendish bananas — are about a dollar more.

Grown in Central America, Mexico and parts of Australia, the red-skinned banana remains white inside.

Browne Street Countdown store manager Mark Walker said the fruit was selling quite well. "They taste sweeter," he said.

Timaru Produce Wholesalers managing director Gavin Charteris said the common yellow bananas imported to New Zealand arrived green.

They were then gassed with a diluted mixture of ethylene to change the colour to yellow.

But it is not just bananas that come in a variety of hues.

Mr Charteris said silverbeet can be yellow or red as well as standard green and the coloured versions were used in restaurants as garnish.

"People are just used to vegetables being a certain colour; they don't know what to do with a purple cauli. They don't know what it is."

He thought the colouring, related to the seed breed, was often just a gimmick.

"A restaurant may promote a ‘jubilee of vegetables’, but they all taste the same," Mr Charteris said.

Carrots can grow purple, yellow or white naturally. Juice Products NZ processes locally grown orange, yellow and purple carrots for export at its Washdyke factory.

Twenty per cent of the company's plantings are coloured other than orange, because of demand.

Juice Products co-director Damian Honiss said his firm grew them to the size of a wine bottle and did not care about how they looked.

"They are not pretty carrots, they are gnarly. But they're not for the table so they are not for the eye," he said.

Each shade had a different combination of vitamins and minerals which consumers were now seeking out for specific health benefits.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/8799419/But-yes-we-have-red-bananas

[Magoo]

Countdown have been selling musty (moldy) bananas for weeks.  I took one lot back and got a double refund, the second lot went into the compost bin and there won't be a third.  Red, green or yellow.

[Kiwithrottlejockey]

I usually buy my bananas at the Railway New World Metro supermarket at Wellington Railway Station.

They have such a high stock turnover (due to the tens of thousands of commuters passing through every day) that their bananas are always fresh.

[donquixotenz]

they taste crappyanyway, even the yellow ones seem to taste off lately. they should try the longer aussie ones for a change...

[Magoo]

they taste crappyanyway, even the yellow ones seem to taste off lately. they should try the longer aussie ones for a change...

It apparently has something to do with the storage of the bananas and if you sniff them you can smell how musty they are.   The smell has gone right through the fruit.    Blerk.