The improbable rise of the banana, America’s most popular fruit

Walk into almost any grocery store in the continental United States, and you’ll be able to buy bananas for 79 cents a pound or less. To most of us, this seems utterly normal. The banana is so cheap and widely available that, decades ago, it surpassed the apple to become the most widely consumed fruit in the country. But the fact that bananas have become so commonplace is fairly astounding when you think about it. The banana is a delicate tropical fruit: It must be picked and packed by hand, then shipped and refrigerated for thousands of miles before reaching your door. Until the early 20th century, the banana was an exotic, expensive delicacy, unknown to most Americans. Nowadays, there’s growing concern that Panama disease, a parasitic fungus, could wipe out the most popular banana variety altogether… read more >