It turns out the ‘fake’ banana flavouring we’re used to from sweets isn’t as artificial as we might think. The Chase’s Darragh Ennis explained why it tastes different to fresh in his podcast A Normal Meets A Nerd
Have you ever wondered by artificial banana flavour, the kind you could get in those foam banana sweets of your childhood, doesn’t taste like real banana?
It turns out that they kind of do – or at least what fresh bananas used to taste like. On their podcast A Normal Meets A Nerd, The Chase’s Darragh Ennis and comedian Dylan Evans, the hosts discussed this topic – and listeners had no idea.
Dylan, from Liverpool, explained how banana is a “lovely fruit” but that “banana-flavour things” knock him sick. However, quiz expert Darragh, from Dublin, Ireland, said there’s a “good reason why” this is.
Darragh explained: “So, the banana flavouring is what bananas used to taste like.” Picking up on Dylan’s confusion, Darragh explained that “pretty much” all the yellow bananas we buy in the supermarket are the Cavendish variety. He went on to explain that the bananas aren’t reproduced with seeds, but they are clones of each other. “So they’re all exactly the same. So they all taste the same,” he added.
According to Darragh, this variety came to the UK in the 1950s, but before that there was a verity called Gros Michel. However, this was “attacked by a fungal disease”, and because they were clones and genetically identical, they “got almost completely wiped out”.
The disease was called Fusarium wilt of banana, or FWB, which was caused by a fungal pathogen that kills a plant by blocking water and mineral transportation.
“So the Gros Michel banana tasted almost exactly like fake banana flavouring, and they’ve just never changed it. That banana flavouring mimics what bananas were like 75 years ago,” he added.
Taking to Reddit, some forum users discussed what the Gros Michel variety tastes like. One person said: “I think I unknowingly bought some on a local produce market in La Palma, in the Canary islands. Everything about that banana was amazing. The taste is really strong, and resembles the candy flavouring, it took me by surprise. The texture is firm and creamy at the same time, not brittle and slimy like the Cavendish. I highly recommend trying them.”
Another added: “Have you ever tasted banana flavored candy? Laffy Taffy or something similar? The Gros Michel taste is close to that because it contains a higher concentration of isoamyl acetate (the main flavouring component in banana flavouring) than the Cavendish variety does.”
Others had no idea the flavouring was based on real bananas. “I hate bananas but this is actually really interesting,” said one person. “I’ve learned something today,” said another.
