Bananas are loaded with taste for health

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Question: I love bananas and eat at least one each day. A friend told me that I should probably eat them without peeling them because most of the food value of fruits is in the peel. I tried this and it wasn't too bad. Is this true? How good are bananas for you?

Answer: Despite an extensive Internet search using every possible wording, I could not find a single item that discussed the nutritional value of banana peels.

It is not true that most of the food value of fruit is in the peel. Most fruits' peels are largely indigestible and therefore serve only as a source of dietary fiber.

Banana peels do have some reported benefits, however. There are numerous reports of banana peels being used to treat plantar warts. The exact mechanism is unknown.

Descriptions of their use vary from rubbing the wart with a banana peel each night for several weeks to taping the peel onto the wart for days at a time. The problem with determining the true value of banana peels in treating warts is that just about anything you do works some of the time. That's just the nature of warts.

Banana peels also have been used to treat headaches, but the information about that is sketchier than for warts. I even found reports of banana peels being used to treat painful hemorrhoids.

Bananas appear in many folk remedies. The pulp may be mashed and made into a poultice to treat open wounds. Some of the substances in bananas have antibacterial properties. Bananas are high in sugar, and high sugar concentrations can kill bacteria. Sugar has been mixed with iodine and used in chronically infected wounds in the past with some success. Newer, more effective regimens have made this obsolete.

One doesn't have to eat the peel to derive many benefits from bananas. It is one of the healthiest fruits in our diet. Although we speak of banana trees, the banana plant is actually an herb. The name banana is derived from the Arabic for finger. Written references to bananas date back before 500 BC. You are not alone in enjoying them. They are the only fruit to appear in a list of the top 10 foods consumed worldwide and are the No. 1 fruit crop in the world. About 154 billion pounds are consumed annually -- about 30 pounds per person per year.

Bananas are the most easily digested fruit, and allergies to bananas are very rare. Those two properties make them very popular for infants. A one-cup serving of banana contains somewhere between 140 and 200 calories, most of which is carbohydrate, with a small amount of protein, and almost no fat. Bananas are a good source of dietary fiber.

Because the calories in bananas are readily available, they are a good source of quick energy after exercise. That's one reason they are often found at the finish line of endurance events such as marathons. They are high in potassium and may help naturally lower high blood pressure. Chemicals in bananas, such as dopamine and norepinephrine, are natural transmitters in our nervous system, and mood elevation is another benefit of bananas.

Bananas may help control diarrhea and have been shown to help critically ill patients who are on tube feedings.

So you can see it's a good idea to keep eating bananas -- and you can keep peeling them too.

Richard Bosshardt is a plastic surgeon in Tavares. If you have a medical question, send it to him at 1879 Nightingale Lane, Suite A-2, Tavares, FL 32778 or e-mail rtbosshardt@aol.com.

Copyright 2006, Orlando Sentinel

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