What you see: A banana that looks mostly fine, except its skin has split.
What it is: The wrong kind of banana split!
Eat or toss: To be on the safe side, either commit to baking the banana (banana bread anyone?) or cut around the exposed area with wide margins. Eating the entire banana fresh would be riskier than eating a banana with an intact peel.
Is it safe to eat a banana with a split peel?
A banana with a split peel is more likely to be hosting problematic bacterial growth than a banana with an intact peel–even if the fruit still looks normal under the peel. That said, bananas are not associated with foodborne pathogens the way that certain other fruits and vegetables are (looking at you melons and leafy greens). And while they’re certainly moist, bananas aren’t dripping with juice–bacteria are more likely to thrive in a plum with a cracked skin than a banana. So, there’s an element of increased risk here, but it’s not as dramatic as it could be.
What should you do with a banana with a split peel?
When food microbiologist Don Schaffner and food safety expert Ben Chapman assessed split bananas on their podcast, Risky or Not, both concluded a banana with a split peel would be risky, but marginally so.
Schaffner, who teaches at Rutgers University, said he would cut out the split portion of banana, but would be comfortable eating the rest. Chapman, who is a professor and the director of the Safe Plates food safety extension and research program at North Carolina State University, said he would peel the banana and use the entire thing for banana bread. In the off chance bacteria had landed in the open space, he said, they would be killed by cooking.
“Imagine you had just purchased a package of food and the package had a hole in it,” Schaffner said. The peel, he pointed out, is “the natural packaging for the banana.”
How risky is it to eat a banana where the skin has split open?
Still, when I later spoke with Schaffner about the safety of eating bananas with split peels, he noted that circumstances would need to be just right for such a banana to lead to someone getting a foodborne illness.
“Imagining a scenario where the pathogens have to get from the cut surface into the fruit of the banana and then spread through the banana,” he said. “It just seems pretty far-fetched to me.”
He also noted that he wasn’t aware of outbreaks ever being traced back to bananas, regardless of whether the skin was split. That suggests that pathogens don’t tend to get caught up in banana supply chains or at least don’t tend to settle on bananas in problematic ways.
Still, even if the banana flesh looks fine, eating a banana with a split peel is riskier than eating an intact banana.
What if the banana flesh near a split banana is dark and/or moldy?
Bananas with split peels are more vulnerable to rots, as well as fruitfly infestations.
While growing colonies of human pathogens are usually invisible to the naked eye, if spoilage microbes (read: microbes that spoil food, but don’t typically cause human illness), get in there, they might make fast work of the banana, turning it into some combination of dark, leaky, fuzzy or squishy. In that case, the banana won’t taste good and could still be hosting invisible human pathogens who might particularly enjoy liquified banana, so steer clear. The U.S. Department of Agriculture advises that soft fruits and vegetables with mold should be discarded.
Why do banana peels split while they’re still in a bunch?
According to researchers, high temperatures and humid conditions can lead peels to split. Bananas left on the tree to ripen are more likely to split. In North America, peels are most likely to split at the end of the supply chain, after they’ve ripened, but while they are still in plastic bags that trap moisture.
SOURCES:
- Don Schaffner. Microbiologist. Extension Specialist in Food Science and Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University.
- Budnik’s Banana. Episode 14 of Risky or Not. Co-hosted by Don Schaffner (Rutgers University) and Ben Chapman (North Carolina State University). March 4, 2020.
- Question: Why is the skin splitting in the bananas I am shipping? Answer by Adel Kader. Postharvest Research and Extension Center. University of California at Davis – Department of Plant Sciences.
- Banana disorders and diseases. Wageningen University & Research.
- Factors determining the mechanical properties of banana fruit skin during induced ripening. Bishnu P. Khanal, Kalpana Pudasaini, Bimbisar Sangroula, Moritz Knoche. Postharvest Biology and Technology. Volume 198, April 2023, 112252
