Bananas - the Impact of a Single Fruit

The Impact of a Single Fruit

To many individuals a banana is simply just a yellow fruit. Consumption wise is more popular than apples and oranges combined. However, this simple yellow fruit has and continues to have a great impact on the world. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, is a gripping book about the history, value, and future of a simple fruit: the banana. Author, Dan Koeppel, gives insightful details about the history the banana holds, and also provides a powerful argument about its fate. Koeppel educates the reader about the science, origin, location, and movement of the banana. He also addresses the number one concern banana's face today: their destiny. Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, is an overwhelming educational book about the informative history of the banana and its uncertain future.

The author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World is a graduate of Hampshire College. Koeppel is an outdoors, nature, adventure writer. He is an American with a passion for Mountain biking. Koeppel has written for several magazines, including "New York Times Magazine". This book he writes includes facts rather than experiences and is very clear and concise. He provides excellent information about a fruit many know so little about.

Koeppel begins his enlightening journey of bananas by addressing their origin. He brings this back to the beginning of time. The author clearly maintains a Christian world view as Koeppel begins by proposing a question. He states, "Over the centuries, scholars outside of Renaissance Europe asserted that the identification (of the tree of knowledge of good and evil) should have been the banana" . Koeppel denotes not only a Creation by an all-powerful God, but also dates the beginning of the banana back to the earliest time known. To come to this conclusion Koeppel studied the Arabic terms back in this time period. The forbidden tree was called the talh, which is an Arabic word translating as "the banana tree" .

Koeppel talks much about the area and regions that farm bananas. Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and Oman are some of the formal regions mentioned. However, Malaysia is noted to be the country of origin. Koeppel describes its spread to Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Bananas grew in an arc spreading from Southeast Asia to New Guinea. Not long after it was brought to the Americas by a Cape Cod sea captain, Lorenzo Dow Baker, around 1502 A.D.

This simple fruit has several species, however the most popular one to America is also known as the American Cavendish. It is the world's largest herb and the fruit is a giant berry. In this book the banana is described at its earliest stages as a seedless fruit with a unique reproductive system. Each banana is a perfect twin of the former, which makes it incredibly easy to transport