I began my second concept experience with the obvious statement “bananas are yellow.” I started my research with the question “why are bananas yellow.” It was surprisingly difficult to find an answer from any sort of scientific website, most of the results were ask websites, like Yahoo! Answers. I was able to find some information on the Chiquita Banana website and from other cooking websites; however, I was not able to find a scientific answer to this question.
I revised my question with “how do bananas turn yellow?” because they do not start out yellow, rather they turn yellow from green. This also had similar results in terms of search results not being especially reliable sources. There were a few more cooking websites and tutorials about how to keep bananas riper longer, but still no scientific answers to the question. Click here.
To try and find the science behind yellow bananas I searched “what scientific reason turns bananas yellow?” which probably gave me the least useful information. The search results were all about turning over-ripened, brown bananas back to yellow (which, as it turns out, does not work).
I was finally able to find a scientific answer to my questions by searching “the science behind banana ripening,” which yielded mixed results. There was a mix of information about fruit ripening in general, as well as some of the results I had seen in past searches. Apparently, bananas have to be near other bananas or similar fruits that give off ethylene gas in order to ripen. If a banana is not exposed to this gas its peel will not turn yellow and then brown but the inner meat will still ripen and then rot away. The yellow comes from the diminishing amount of chlorophyll as the banana ripens and turns green. The banana then turns brown as the sugars ferment within the banana and its peel.
I found through this research that typing actual questions into Google will result in more “ask” sites because those are the exact words that users on these sites are using, whereas finding ways to make the questions into statements will bring about better results that will reliably answer the questions.
Now enjoy this abstract image.
