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After reading this, you’ll never look at a banana in the same way again

4:28 AM
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This is interesting. After reading this, you’ll never look at a banana in the same way again.

Bananas contain three natural sugars – sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber. A banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.
Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world’s leading athletes.
But energy isn’t the only way a banana can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.

DEPRESSION
According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.
PMS:
Forget the pills – eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.

ANEMIA
High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.
BLOOD PRESSURE:
This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it perfect to beat blood pressure So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit’s ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

BRAIN POWER
200 students at a Twickenham school ( England ) were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.

CONSTIPATION
High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.

HANGOVERS
One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

HEARTBURN
Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.

MORNING SICKNESS
Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.
MOSQUITO BITES:
Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

NERVES
Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system..
Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and chips. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

ULCERS
The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chroniclercases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

TEMPERATURE CONTROL
Many other cultures see bananas as a ‘cooling’ fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand , for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.
So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has FOUR TIMES the protein, TWICE the carbohydrate, THREE TIMES the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals.. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say, ‘A BANANA a day keeps the doctor away!’

Source: http://www.karenstan.net/

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Bananas and Diabetes

By Charity Cason, Wed, April 27, 2011

Diabetics have to be very careful about their intake of sugar. Having too much or too little can cause upsetting side effects such as hypoglycemia. One common offender of blood sugar problems can be bananas. Because they are high in carbohydrates, they increase blood sugar more so than many other fruits.

Many dietitians will tell diabetics not to eat bananas; however, they can be acceptable as long as they are consumed in moderation. The body will convert carbohydrates into glucose in order to provide energy to the entire body. This also causes the pancreas to secrete insulin so that glucose can be absorbed by all the cells in the body.

Diabetics should pay careful attention to something called the glycemic index. This tells them how much a particular food will impact blood sugar levels. If a food has a high glycemic index, blood sugar and insulin levels will go up faster and higher. Obviously, diabetics need to stay away from these foods as often as possible. Bananas have a higher glycemic index than apples, for instance. However, all things considered, they are still relatively low.

Researchers also found that the more ripe banana, the higher its glycemic index. This is thought to be because the starch makes up about 80 to 90% of its carbohydrates. As the banana gets riper, it changes to free more sugars.

Although bananas have been thought to be a bad guy in the diabetic diet, they can be consumed in moderation as long as the patient is consistently monitoring their blood sugar levels as they should be. Eating some protein with the banana, such as yogurt or eggs, can help to prevent any blood

Source: http://www.battlediabetes.com/articles/diet/bananas-and-diabetes

Glycemic Index

Foods that are low on the glycemic index cause less of a rise in blood sugar levels than foods that are higher on the glycemic index. A banana that is a bit green is lower on the glycemic index than a riper banana. If you eat a banana, which is a medium glycemic index food, eat it along with foods that are low on the glycemic index or with foods that contain little or no carbohydrate, as this will help keep your blood sugar from spiking. Foods low on the glycemic index include nuts, non-starchy vegetables and beans. Meat, fish, poultry, cheese and eggs are examples of foods that contain very little carbohydrate. Fruits that have a lower glycemic index include raw apples, cherries and grapefruit, and those that have a higher glycemic index include dried dates and watermelon.

Source: http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/can-diabetic-eat-bananas-2717.html

The information provided on battlediabetes.com is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her health professional. This information is solely for informational and educational purposes. The publication of this information does not constitute the practice of medicine, and this information does not replace the advice of your physician or other health care provider. Neither the owners or employees of battlediabetes.com nor the author(s) of site content take responsibility for any possible consequences from any treatment, procedure, exercise, dietary modification, action or application of medication which results from reading this site. Always speak with your primary health care provider before engaging in any form of self treatment. Please see our Legal Statement for further information.

Edited by shyc
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  • 2 weeks later...

Woooo.... It looks like a fun thing to have at home.!!

 

The thing is, well at least for me, after I use it once or two times. it will then stay in the drawer for the rest of its life. Unless I have little kids at home; it would be so much fun to play with it and the kids.

Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

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I hope the bananas will be able to fight against the fungus rampage!

 

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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=banana-threatening-fungus

 

Banana Fungus Creeps Closer to World's Key Plantations

Fears rise for Latin American industry as devastating disease hits leading variety in Africa and Middle East

By Declan Butler and Nature magazine

 

banana-threatening-fungus_1.jpg

Cavendish bananas.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Steve Hopson

 

A variant of a fungus that rots and kills the main variety of export banana has been found in plantations in Mozambique and Jordan, raising fears that it could spread to major producers and decimate supplies. The pathogen, which was until now limited to parts of Asia and a region of Australia, has a particularly devastating effect on the popular Cavendish cultivar, which accounts for almost all of the multibillion-dollar banana export trade. Expansion of the disease worldwide could be disastrous, say researchers.

 

The disease is caused by strains of a soil fungus called Fusarium oxysporum f. sp.cubense (Foc). A strain of Foc previously wiped out the Gros Michel cultivar, which was the main exported banana variety from the nineteenth century until the 1950s. In response, the industry replaced Gros Michel plants with the Cavendish variety, which is resistant to that Foc strain. But Cavendish is susceptible to the new Foc Tropical Race 4 (Foc-TR4) strain, and could meet the same fate as Gros Michel if the fungus reaches Latin America, the world’s leading banana exporter, says Rony Swennen of the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and a banana breeder at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Dar es Salaam. “It’s a gigantic problem,” he adds. Although Foc strains spread slowly, they are almost impossible to eliminate from soil.

 

Foc-TR4 was first detected in Asia in the 1990s, and is now found in Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, China and northern Australia (see "Fruit threat"). The outbreak in Jordan, reported on October 29 (F. A. Garcia et al. Plant Dis. http://doi.org/qd3; 2013), was the first to be described outside those nations. The Mozambique outbreak was reported last month.

 

Nobody is sure how the fungus arrived in Jordan or Mozambique. Migrant workers from Asia might inadvertently have brought contaminated soil with them. Another possibility is the import of infected rhizomes—the stems from which banana plants propagate. But much of the Cavendish industry now uses tissue culture, which produces pathogen-free plantlets.

 

Gert Kema, a Fusarium researcher at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands and co-author of the Jordan report, believes that further spread is inevitable. “I’m incredibly concerned,” he says. “I will not be surprised if it pops up in Latin America in the near future.” That region, along with the Caribbean, accounts for more than 80 percent of banana exports. If Foc-TR4 takes root there, it could lead to the slow demise of industrial farming of the Cavendish variety. To slow the spread, good farm hygiene, and prompt quarantine and destruction of infected plants are crucial. Altus Viljoen, a researcher at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, was called in to identify the cause of the Mozambique outbreak, and says that authorities were quick to take action. He estimates that the disease has been present for two to three years.

 

Smaller farms in Asia are already trying to mitigate losses. Tissue culture of Cavendish plants has generated variants with random mutations that confer partial resistance to Foc-TR4. Planting of these variants, in combination with measures such as crop rotation, has allowed the cultivation of bananas on contaminated land. But production losses and higher costs make affected plantations less economically viable.

 

Progress in creating bananas fully resistant to Foc-TR4, either by classical breeding or genetic engineering, has so far been limited. The wild Asian banana Musa acuminata malaccensis—the genome of which was published last year (A. D’Hont Nature 488, 213–217; 2012)—seems to be resistant, and researchers are experimenting with putting its resistance genes into the Cavendish. The resulting transgenic specimens have been in field trials for 18 months on contaminated ground in Australia, and are looking “very promising”, says James Dale, director of the Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. But he cautions that the full results are not yet in.

 

Most of the bananas important for the food supply are grown by smallholder farmers in low-income countries and consumed locally. Hundreds of cultivars are farmed, and this biodiversity is an important rampart against disease. Researchers do not yet have a full picture of the susceptibility of these varieties, but many cultivars are likely to be resistant to Foc-TR4 because they are biologically different to the Cavendish. For those who buy their bananas in supermarkets, the Cavendish may well be the only variety they know. But exports of the cultivar account for only about 13 percent of the 150 million or so tonnes of bananas and cooking bananas (plantains) produced annually. Industrial farms growing a single Cavendish cultivar are at a high risk of Foc-TR4 infestation, but the fungus poses less of a threat to the bulk of the bananas that provide a staple for some 400 million people worldwide.

 

For his part, Dale is trying to engineer Gros Michel bananas for resistance to the original Foc strain. The Cavendish is bland by comparison and it bruises more easily. Dale would like to see Gros Michel on supermarket shelves again. “It’s such a superior banana to Cavendish. To bring it back would be wonderful.”

 

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on December 11, 2013.

Edited by darkflame

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unripe or Ripe Banana?

 

Banana is sweeter as it ripens. This is because the process called Glycogenolysis in the fruit's tissues that breaks down starch (glycogen) into sugar (glucose).

 

Glycogen_phosphorylase2.png

 

If you eat raw banana, your body would need to do the same process to break down the starch into sugar. With ripe banana, you can get sugar immediately. But this could cause a sudden surge in blood sugar which is not helpful for people with diabetes. So, it's best to eat banana that is not too ripe. You can also eat them with peanut butter to prevent the sudden surge in blood sugar as the butter will slow down the absorption of sugar into your blood stream. And I love peanut butter.

Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.”

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