Food Value of the Banana: Opinion of Leading Medical and Scientific Authorities

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United Fruit Company, 1917 - Bananas - 35 pages
 

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Page 28 - The banana flour, when prepared from the best quality of bananas, is made into a thin gruel or porridge by the addition of either water or milk, and eaten with cream it constitutes a delicious and highly nutritious article of diet suitable in cases of gastric irritability and acute gastritis, etc.
Page 19 - The Undervalued Banana. The dictum that fruits should be eaten "in their season" finds its limitations as regards variety in the temperate zones at certain periods of the year. There is, however, one fruit which is readily available fresh in American markets at practically all seasons, although it grows best from November to April in its tropical or semitropical home. It is unfortunate that an article of diet which meets certain nutritive requirements so well and is so easily obtained at reasonable...
Page 28 - Stanley, who was in the midst of a severe attack of acute gastritis, as follows: " He eats porridge made with banana flour and milk. It is very light and digestible, and has more flavour than arrowroot; it is also very nutritious. We whites have very good reason to know this fact now, as we have mostly lived on banana flour for the past two years.
Page 20 - Experience shows that the thoroughly ripe banana (or the less ripe fruit, after cooking) is undeserving of the unfavorable reputation which it has won in certain quarters. It forms a useful addition to the dietary, richer in nutrients and far more delicious than some of its more expensive competitors.
Page 19 - This process can be hastened or delayed within certain limits according to the momentary demands of the retail trade. The color of the peel gives evidence of the degree of ripeness. The green banana contains, in the part exclusive of the skin, about 1.5 per cent, of protein and 20 to 25 per cent, of carbohydrate, almost entirely starch. In the ripe banana, with yellow-brown peel, the edible part contains somewhat less (16 to 19 per cent.) of carbohydrate; but that which remains is now almost entirely...
Page 19 - It is unfortunate that an article of diet which meets nutritive requirement so well and is so easily obtained at reasonable cost as the banana should be the subject of much misunderstanding among both physicians and laymen. For, despite the fact that over forty million bunches are reported to have been brought to the United States last year, it is popularly stated in many quarters that the banana is difficult of digestion and may give rise to alimentary distress. A closer consideration of the composition...
Page 19 - ... rotten" when the skin becomes darkened, whereas they eagerly eat the yellow-green starch-bearing fruit at a stage of incomplete ripeness. "Green" bananas, like "green" apples, are unwholesome so long as the starch has not been adequately converted into sugars in the ripening processes. But the delicious and innocuous ripe banana should not be made to suffer in its dietetic reputation because of the ignorance of the consumer.
Page 12 - ... as a fruit or as a vegetable, cooked or raw, in their normal form or dried or powdered, shows clearly that in this remarkable fruit we have an adjunct to our dietary which should not be underestimated.
Page 18 - The banana would appear to be a particularly valuable food to employ in the dietetic treatment of nephritic patients with nitrogen retention. Very satisfactory results have been obtained' in the rather mild cases of nephritis here reported. So long as the patients exhibit no distaste for the fruit, there would seem to be no reason why bananas should not be employed in considerable quantity.
Page 21 - February, 1917, says : The onion, like most green vegetables, is of value in the diet chiefly for the mineral salts which it contains. It is these and not its protein that make it a valuable addition to bread and meat. Bread and cereals and meat are described by the chemist as having an excess of acid-forming over base-forming mineral matters. Green vegetables and fruits are of the opposite character, having an excess of base-forming minerals.

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