President’s Message
Fellow Rotarians,
Very Warm Greetings!!!
When people talk about ‘fruit’, reference is usually to a very specific fruit or generally, ignoring the varieties of the fruit or its different colours.
There is one fruit that deserves special recognition because it’s probably the world’s most universally consumed fruit and spans generations, as food from our toothless babies to our toothless elders. It’s soft, sweet, and easy to digest. It’s the ‘banana’ – and here are some things which many of us may not be aware about bananas.
The banana’s parent plant isn’t a tree but a ‘herb’, and the fruit itself is a ‘berry’. It is the fourth-most valuable food crop in the world, behind only wheat, rice and milk. In India, it is the secondmost important fruit crop after mango. Banana is available around the year, is affordable, nutritious, tasty and also has medicinal value, which makes it one of the most in demand fruits, as a food for salads, main course and desert. Bananas come in yellow, red, blue and green colours and in different sizes and shapes.
There are more than 300 known varieties of bananas all across the world. However, in India, only 15 to 20 varieties are predominantly grown by farming. Of the thousands of bananas grown on Earth, the only one with truly global reach and most common is called ‘Cavendish’. To most of the world, it is simply a banana, cloned so many times over, that a banana you buy in one country is almost identical as that in another country.
India is however known for different banana varieties and banana production, which is due to the apt combination of tropical weather and humidity. Picking up a normal regular banana is good practice, but it is also prudent to know the types of banana and relish them while consuming them.
Commercially, bananas are classified as dessert types and culinary types. The culinary types have starchy fruits and they are used in the mature unripe form as vegetables. Bananas are consumed not just as fruit, but also blended into a smoothie, a raita, a dessert or as a raw plantain in making some delicious side dishes.
The major banana growing states in India are Tamil Nadu followed by Maharashtra and Karnataka.
The varieties of bananas and its enormous health benefit have motivated people around the world to know the importance of banana and its consumption. Banana is a rich source of fibre, carbohydrate and is rich in vitamins particularly vitamin B and C. It is also a good source of potassium, manganese, phosphorus, calcium and magnesium. The fruit is easy to digest, and believed to be free from fat and cholesterol, said to be good source of energy, for skin, blood pressure, constipation, stomach ulcers, heartburn, aid digestion, control blood sugar, improved heart, bone and brain health and beat gastro intestinal issues. Even the banana peel has both medicinal and home care uses.
Preeti Mehta
President