Bananas for Bananas: Learn About Nutrition, When to Eat, and How to Store Them

Potassium is an important mineral for many organs to function properly. It is most important to your heart as it helps your heart beat! Potassium is also important for your brain to help you concentrate better. The recommended daily intake of potassium is 4700mg according to the USDA. Bananas are a great source of potassium. A large sized banana that is about 8 inches long contains almost 500mg of potassium. They are also full of other vitamins and minerals that are important for your body to absorb. Bananas are said to contain everything a human needs and they contain all the 8 amino-acids our body cannot produce itself.

Bananas are not only good for you they taste great as too. Even kids often times choose a banana over a sweet treat. Bananas are gold around my house. We buy 3 bundles every time we go to the store and they are usually all gone by the second day. I started to buy a couple of bundles that were ready to eat or close to it. And then a bundle or two of the greenest bananas I could find. That way we will have some bananas at the end of the week when the green ones have ripened.

When bananas are all yellow with some brown speckling they are ripe and sweet to eat. The more brown speckles there are the sweeter the bananas. Bananas that are all yellow or yellow with a little green on the ends are just about ready to eat. They will be totally ripe in a few days. Green bananas keep for much longer. It will take several days for green bananas to become ripe at room temperature. All bananas should be kept at room temperature until they are ripe.

If you would like to speed up the ripening process then place an apple in the same bowl or bag as your bananas. The ethylene gas from the apple will help speed up the ripening process in the bananas. A tomato works just as well. Just about all fruits and vegetables give off ethylene gas so it's best to store your bananas away from all other produce if you don't want them to ripen too quickly.

I was always told growing up to never put the bananas in the refrigerator because they will spoil. The peel will turn black and that means they are rotten. Turns out you can store your bananas in the fridge but there are some things you need to know. After a banana has turned all yellow and has started to speckle with brown spots that means it is ripe. This is when you can put them in the fridge. The ripening process will stop once you put them in the fridge so make sure they are ate the ripeness you like before you store in the fridge. The more speckles there are on the bananas the more ripe it becomes and in turn the sweeter they become. They will keep for a week or two at most. Which is a little bit longer than if you kept them out at room temperature. (At room temperature, the bananas will continue to ripen and eventually spoil if not eaten before it turns black.) The peel on the bananas stored in the fridge will become black but the fruit on the inside will still be white and perfect for eating.

If you ever end up with too many bananas and don't want them to go to waste then you can freeze them and use them at a later date. Get a cookie sheet and line it with parchment paper. Peel your bananas. Slice them and put the slices on the parchment paper or leave them whole and place them on the paper. You can squeeze a little lemon juice on the bananas to help prevent them from browning. You can also add a stick to the whole bananas if you wish to eat them frozen like banana pops. Also you can dip frozen bananas in chocolate for an even tastier frozen treat. Place the cookie sheet of bananas in your freeze over night. Once they have frozen solid, place them in a freezer storage back and pull out however many bananas you need for your recipe whenever you need them. Frozen bananas are great in fruit smoothies, banana bread recipes, muffins, etc.

What's great about bananas is that they are a delicious fruit that is available all year round. And they are one the cheapest fruits if not the cheapest fruit you can buy. And they are packed full of nutrients. If you are on a tight budget but still want to get your serving of fruit in, bananas are definitely a good choice for your body and your pocket book!