How do you eat a banana?

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Bananas make such a convenient and tasty snack. They are easily portable, come with their own biodegradable wrapping, and nothing extra (like a knife) is required to open and eat one. Perhaps strangely, I thought that everyone ate them the same way, as shown in the picture. By peeling the skin part way down, then holding the still skin-covered end while taking bites from the top end. There must be thousands of photos of bananas like this. Even play food includes part-peeled bananas. Even pictures of monkeys eating bananas shows them holding them like this. So I was surprised recently when a friend with young children came to visit. When one wanted a snack, the dad took a banana, peeled it completely, then gave the child the whole peeled banana. Why would you do that? When a banana comes complete with a convenient and clean way to hold it while you eat, why would you remove that and have your child squish the inside in their sticky little hands and then no doubt get squashy banana smeared on everything afterwards? When I commented on this he was surprised and didn’t seem to know that there was any other way to eat a banana. Where has he been all his life?? I remembered this yesterday when another friend came over and she gave her small child a banana to eat in the ‘normal’ way. When I told her the above tale she was so agitated at the thought of anyone doing anything so odd that she spilled her tea! So how do you eat yours? All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2022.