How to Properly Peel a Banana

Written 28 November, 2010

How to Properly Peel a Banana

Chimpanzees know how to do it. Macaques and capuchin monkeys know how to do it. A few people know how to do it. But most of us don't.

I, for one, have been doing it wrong my entire life.

Bananas, as you may well know-- or maybe you, having seen them only on the display tables at the supermarket, don't-- grow with the sharp ends pointing upwards. And for the technically-minded among us, the clusters of bananas at the market aren't bunches, but hands (for fingers, get it?). A bunch of bananas is pictured at blog top.

So anyway, if you're like me, you've always held bananas with the stalk pointing up and peeled them from the apparent top. As any baboon could tell you, that's wrong, wrong, wrong!

For the past some years I've used a kitchen knife to make a cut at the base of the stem; that to avoid mashing the top (actually, the bottom) of the fruit. Before that I would use a thumbnail to slice through the peel lengthwise.

But there's a better way to peel a banana-- from the official top rather than the cultural top. That is, hold the banana by the stem (how clever, it has a handle!), with what you;ve always considered the bottom at the top. Now just pinch and pull away a section. Then another. Easy, isn't it? And the banana isn't damaged at all. See here for a tutorial.

Which just goes to show, when it comes to men and monkeys, there's no doubt who is smarter.

Cartoonanimals Monkey Top Jar