Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/07/gene-edited-non-browning-banana-cut-food-waste-tropic-norwich

by geox • 1 year ago

68 76 1 year ago

whoitwas2• 1 year ago

They slowed the ripening process. It does turn brown, just slower. Clickbait is clickbait.

giarc• 1 year ago

I'd disagree. Title is appropriate "could cut food waste" is very true and pretty mild. A clickbait title would be "Gene-edited non-browning bananas will solve food waste problem"

whoitwas2• 1 year ago

It's mild click bait. They aren't slamming hunger in the nuts, my point is the banana turns brown. It's not "non-browning".

jmclnx• 1 year ago

What, no more banana bread :(

CaffeineLD50• 1 year ago

Indeed. Better food management fixes it without crispr.

aitchnyu2• 1 year ago

Cuisine is what happened when people wanted their food to last.

karmakaze2• 1 year ago

No problem, someone will make a banana browning machine for the purpose.

rrr_oh_man• 1 year ago

For a small monthly subscription it will brown¹ your bananas.

¹ Final color of banana may not actually be brown.

magnetowasright• 1 year ago

Juicero 2.0: banana browning edition, coming soon

vacuity2• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Food waste will not be addressed properly without cultural shifts. Granted, certain technological improvements may prompt them, but that's a bit backwards of a problem solving method.

cjbgkagh2• 1 year ago

I wonder if things like tipping culture will encourage people to eat at home and be more mindful about their consumption. I hate being extorted for 25% tips and then told if I can’t afford the 25% then I shouldn’t be eating out.

Kind of how the hatred of dealing with printer companies and their extortionist ink prices accelerated the shift to paperless.

So maybe we’ll get to a better state, perhaps not through the means we expected.

rwyinuse• 1 year ago

I bet current US government's economic policies will be even more effective at reducing food waste. Food waste will be radically reduced when the prices skyrocket, and the masses can barely afford their groceries, let alone eating out. Tariffs combined with deportations of agricultural labor will likely lead to that outcome.

pipe2devnull• 1 year ago

25%? That’s so high. Most places in the USA I feel like 18-20% is the norm

hx8• 1 year ago

I'm not sure that eating out solves the food waste problem. I'll agree that in theory centralizing food preparation could lead to increased efficiency, but in practice eating out is most often either a luxury or convince experience and emphasizes those two things much more than cost or efficiency. Maybe one day automation can reduce labor costs allowing restaurants to sell cheaper food, but no one has seemed to figure out that problem yet.

In addition to price (which is a function of efficiency), I wouldn't shift any more of my eating behavior to out of the house until the following problems are solved.

* Portion sizes. I usually eat 600-800 calories in a sitting at home. This portion size is considered a light meal in restaurants, and generally has less appealing options and ordering it sends weird social signals.

* Healthier food. Most restaurants use more oils and salt than my preference. The vegetables and fruit are usually less fresh than even Walmart/Kroger offers.

* Time investment. I can cook and clean maybe 25 different dishes in less than 20 minutes of focused work at home. Much more if you count semi-prepared foods that come frozen or in boxes. The only thing that competes with time investment is hot food delivery, which comes at about a 8x price premium compared to cooking.

batch12• 1 year ago

I used to wait tables. With that said, I also don't like that wait staff costs are hidden from the menu price of a meal. It also seems very rich person cosplay to decide how much I should pay my servant wench after a meal. Even more irritating is the request to tip now for almost any food purchase and to-go order at the register. One doesn't even know where that tip goes. The food prep person? Cook? Expo? Split? To the restaurant? Who knows?

karmakaze2• 1 year ago

The price of bananas are artificially low anyway, so increasing delivery efficiency will make the same prices less artificial.

thih9• 1 year ago

Increasing the yield of a crop, such as wheat, for a given area will reduce the area required to achieve the same total yield. However, increasing efficiency may make it more profitable to grow wheat and lead farmers to convert land to the production of wheat, thereby increasing land use instead.

Off topic, if we apply this to AI, in theory we could work less, with AI making us more efficient and allowing us to achieve the same results. But because we are humans, we are going to value our work less, and ask ourselves to work more.

marky19913• 1 year ago

From the wikipedia article: "As an example of where the paradox did not occur, large improvements in farming productivity (including the Third Agricultural Revolution) led to lower food prices but did not result in increased demand for food. (Demand for food is inelastic.) This instead led to lower employment in the farming sector, which declined from 40% of Americans in 1900 to less than 2% in 2024.[14]"

But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?

vacuity2• 1 year ago

Thank you for pointing out that food demand is inelastic, that does shift my perspective somewhat. A complication about demand for food is that American culture promotes luxury and overindulgence. Still not elastic, but more food waste than is "normal". In general, buying more food should cause more food waste.

But generally, I don't see the relevance. Jevon's paradox is about lowered costs driving further demand; how does a non-browning banana lower the cost of bananas?

I think cost is not as relevant here, moreso that people will buy more bananas, as they will brown less quickly, but will often overshoot.

knowitnone2• 1 year ago

I have close to 0 food waste. My small refridgerator sits empty often. I buy enough fresh food(meats, veggies_ for a 3 days and go get more when I have close to or at 0. Most people's refridgerators are completely full and most times, they don't even know what's in there.

vivzkestrel• 1 year ago

what are the long term effects of consuming such a banana daily?

ada1981• 1 year ago

Avocados could use this.

DonHopkins• 1 year ago

Gene-editing the Atheist's Nightmare is sacrilege!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A

maury91• 1 year ago

I have noticed that putting bananas in the fridge has a weird effect, the peel turns black like if it's outside, but the inside of the banana stays yellow and hard. It is very weird to peel a full black banana and find the inside normal without any browning

morkalork• 1 year ago

I see this all the time with bananas that go from green to brown without turning yellow, I always heard people blame the bananas getting too cold during shipping.

hinkley5• 1 year ago

I lost it when I moved but we used to have a chart on the fridge that said which fruits you should or should not store together because they make each other ripen faster.

staticautomatic• 1 year ago

Whenever I see this happen, I like to say the bananas are sublimating.

hinkley5• 1 year ago

Wild assed guess: the cold slows down the chemical reactions in the flesh of the banana but cannot save the skin. Putting bananas in a bag makes them ripen faster, and a fridge is just a larger enclosed space.

hhhAndrew• 1 year ago

This! I used to think fridging bananas ruined them right away as they went brown, until I learned the insides are perfectly fine.

wakawaka282• 1 year ago

Bananas emit a gas that causes them to ripen faster. The same gas can also cause other fruits in the same space to ripen. It's weird but kinda useful. There are products out there claiming to absorb this gas, to keep everything fresh for longer.

ourmandave• 1 year ago

Counter argument: 40 Recipes for Ripe and Overripe Bananas

https://www.forksoverknives.com/recipes/vegan-menus-collecti...

atonse• 1 year ago

Yeah I get a little excited when I see an overripe banana in my house cuz I know my wife’s going to make banana nut bread and we’re gonna finish it all in an hour.

owlstuffing• 1 year ago

Most banana varieties actually taste best and last longer as they start to brown (ripen).

The Cavendish—the dominant grocery store banana—is one of the few that turns mushy and unpleasant when it does.

partiallypro• 1 year ago

I think the Cavendish is better when slightly browned too, it's much sweater. Basically, not edible to me when it's just yellow. There is just a certain point when it stops being good.

contingencies• 1 year ago

Benefits of green: Lower sugar, higher in 5-HTP (potential mood enhancer, sleep enhancer, anti-anxiety). https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-794/5-htp

Benefits of brown: Sweeter, softer, better for making banana bread :) https://www.womensweeklyfood.com.au/recipe/baking/banana-bre...

hulitu2• 1 year ago

sweeter ? yes. Better ? no. It has no taste.

throw-qqqqq• 1 year ago

I prefer the cavendish a little green and unripe, but not so green it leaves my mouth dry from the tannins.

When slightly green, it has a more veggie-like taste and not the super sweet and pungent banana smell/taste. I don’t like them when yellow/browning.

Horses for courses I guess :)

ofalkaed• 1 year ago

is one of the few that turns mushy and unpleasant when it does.

Unpleasant for eating as a banana but quite pleasant for baking. I always buy more banana's than I can possibly eat before they get overripe, eat them raw until they get mushy then make banana bread with the remainder.

crazygringo• 1 year ago

This article seems to be (intentionally?) confusing two different things.

It seems to suggest this is about preventing unpeeled bananas from browning (yellow becomes spots becomes brown). Because it starts "Many of us have been guilty of binning a mushy, overripe banana" and continues "designed to have a longer shelf life".

But the actual details are not that. It is merely:

said to remain fresh and yellow for 12 hours after being peeled

Huh? First of all, I don't know if half-eaten bananas are a major problem with food waste. People usually eat a whole one. And who cares about the peel remaining yellow after it's peeled...? The flesh of a Cavendish banana is off-white, not yellow...

It also says:

and is less susceptible to turning brown when bumped during harvesting and transportation.

Is that a thing? Bananas are usually hard and green during these phases. If they're damaged so much they turn brown while unripe, I don't think I still want to eat them...

ebiester• 1 year ago

But how does it taste?

Does it sacrifice taste? Did anyone look at that?

GoToRO• 1 year ago

Trying to prevent food waste is silly. There is plenty of food where people are organized and no food where they are not. Agriculture needs stability, you need to be sure that after one year of work, you can reap the benefits of that work. This does not happens in places where any guy with an AK can come and steal your crop. It's like a comedian (sightly obese) said: "my Mom said there are hungry children in Africa so I should finish my food. So I did. Hope that helped" (paraphrasing). The irony is that it really doesn't help. The shortage in food is caused by other problems.

o11c• 1 year ago

Trying to prevent food waste is silly for another reason, too.

"No food is wasted" is another way of saying "we are in the middle of a famine and people are eating everything they can."

Food waste is a deliberate government policy decision to prevent famines in lean years. This is explicit for some products, but the benefit still exists for other products.

wakawaka282• 1 year ago

In the interest of preventing famines, food can be stacked up when too much is produced. But even with that policy, it is unlikely that anyone could achieve zero waste without increasing the risks of shortages.

beeforpork• 1 year ago

The brown ones are the most delicious. It's always the same with these novel foods -- they taste terrible, but no-one seems to care.

DonaldFisk• 1 year ago

We’re eating today the same bananas as our grandparents were eating in the 1950s.

No, we're not. Back in the 1950s our grandparents were eating Gros Michel bananas. Now, we're eating (by all accounts) inferior Cavendish bananas.

https://www.epicurious.com/ingredients/history-of-the-gros-m...

hinkley5• 1 year ago

But the reasons we are eating these two bananas is that their skin colors align with the ripeness of the fruit in a way that the human brain thinks makes sense. And because we are monocropping, the same family of fungi are now successfully attacking the Cavendish that took out the Gros Michel.

All the other species of bananas tend to turn brown almost immediately after or around the time they are fully ripe, and that makes them less commercially viable.

So I would say that these gene splices are less interesting for the Cavendish directly and more interesting for bringing genetic diversity into the produce isle. We could have five kinds of banana like we have five kinds of pears. Which indirectly helps the Cavendish by slowing down the doom clock on banana plantations.

lo_zamoyski• 1 year ago

in a way that the human brain thinks makes sense.

Side note: Let us avoid pseudoscientific and pseudophilosophical language like this bit. It is suggestive of the homunculus fallacy, it misconstrues the nature of perception, and ignores the role of habit and cultural influences. It's also artificial, stylistically stodgy, and comes off as pretentious in a gauche, pop sci kind of way.

dostick• 1 year ago

Exactly, who doesn’t know this fact, which is one of first things you learn about selection in consumed plants. And especially Guardian journalist specialising in this topic.

namuol• 1 year ago

The short shelf life of things like bananas gave us wonderful foods like banana bread. It’s really not as big of a problem if we are just more responsible with the food we buy. But I say this mostly as a “yes, and…”

tylerflick• 1 year ago

Browning is a feature not a bug.

DoreenMichele• 1 year ago

Other research teams are working on lettuce that wilts more slowly, bruise-resistant apples and potatoes and identifying the genes that determine how quickly grapes and blueberries shrivel.

Pro tip: Buy your grapes, take them home, rinse them and promptly remove them from the vine. They will last up to a week in the fridge if the plant they grew on isn't desperately trying to stay alive longer with zero hope of survival by feeding on the grapes.

hackernudes• 1 year ago

Anecdote: I always keep my grapes on the vine unrinsed and they last more than a week.

Etheryte• 1 year ago

What do you mean you don't buy grapes and then just eat all of them in one go? Interesting tip though, I know a fair bit about plants and gardening, yet this idea never occurred to me.

phito• 1 year ago

The grapes I buy stay good for more than a week in the fridge without doing anything to them.

knowitnone2• 1 year ago

Pro tip: you can grow your own grapes just by sticking a cutting in the ground. Super easy.

aitchnyu2• 1 year ago

IME the rot setting in from broken skin wins over the effects of vine consuming the nutrients.

seydor• 1 year ago

this will reduce demand for artworks containing bananas and packing tape

iancmceachern• 1 year ago

We've done enough to bananas

notorandit• 1 year ago

To reduce food waste, maybe we could turn to local season-linked food.

If you live in NA, maybe pineapples, bananas and coconuts are not the best choice as they require special treatments to cope with transportation to reach your table. While maybe pears, apples and a number of berries would travel much less and require less treatments.

Done really want to waste research resources just for yellower bananas?

dragonmost• 1 year ago

The point is reducing waste without changing customer habits. People could also eat the brown banana but that's beside the point.

ashoeafoot• 1 year ago

Did they genewrite fungi resistance yet?

betaby• 1 year ago

Modern world supermarket tomatoes are inedible, but looks nice and have a long shelf life. The same goal I suppose is for bananas now.

Gene-edited non-browning banana could cut food waste

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