In chapter 4 of Food
Foolish, John and I write about the magnificent
banana. It happens to be the world’s
favorite fruit. Americans eat 27 lbs. of
bananas on average each year.
Me, I eat a banana most every morning. I talked myself into thinking that bananas
stop my legs from cramping after I run or bike, but the truth is I just like
them. I figure at 300 a year, I eat
about 936 ounces (@ 4 ounces each less 22% for the peel), or about 58 lbs. of
banana. That makes me very close to an
expert on the topic. A 58-Pound-Gorilla,
so to speak.
Bananas come in bunches.
(You can quote me on that.) So
when I buy a bunch I might get, say, seven bananas. (Remember, this is a parable.) The first banana
on the first morning is kind of hard and not real sweet. The third and fourth morning’s bananas are
perfect. And the last morning? Well, sometimes
it’s not pretty.
But first, skip ahead in Food
Foolish to page 125. (What? No copy yet?
See here!) A study done in
1939—in the midst of the Great Depression—determined that the average UK
household wasted about 3% of its weekly groceries.
A recent study pegged the average weekly UK household food waste
at about 25%. What happened?