On Food and Cooking

couple of ounces to 2 lb/50–900 gm. The
characteristic curve of long fruits develops
because the fruit tip grows upward, against the
downward pull of gravity. Bananas and
plantains are climacteric fruits, store their
energy as starch, and convert some or most of
that starch to sugar during ripening. In the
dramatic case of the banana, a starch-to-sugar
ratio of 25 to 1 in the mature but unripe fruit
becomes 1 to 20 in the ripe fruit.
The terms banana and plantain are used
for two broad and overlapping categories for
the many varieties of these fruits. Bananas are
generally sweet dessert varieties, and
plantains are starchy cooking varieties.
Bananas are very sweet when ripe, their nearly
20% sugar content exceeded only by dates and
jujubes, while ripe plantains may be only 6%
sugar and 25% starch. Both are picked green
and ripened in storage, and are very perishable
once ripe thanks to their active metabolism.
Bananas develop a meltingly smooth