What’s the white stuff on the ends of some bananas?

What you see: A subtle mold, likely white, on the stem or end of your banana. It may be almost like powdered sugar or cotton ball fluff that won’t brush off. 
What it is: A fungus that eats dead plant material.
Eat or toss: Remove the peel and eat as long as there’s no evidence of mold or damage on the banana flesh itself.

Can you eat bananas with white mold on the ends?

If you see white, powdery-looking or cottony stuff on either end of your banana, you’re probably looking at mold. But as long as the rest of the fruit still looks good, with a nice yellow color throughout (with allowances, of course, for the brown spots that pop up during ripening), and clean banana flesh underneath, then it should be good to eat.

While in many cases (like this one!), mold means you need to throw away the food, these subtle white molds usually aren’t a problem because they simply nosh on parts of the banana that are already dead and that you weren’t planning to eat. (As a fresh, raw food, most of the banana is actually still “alive;” its cells are humming along and it’s respiring.)

So, the sometimes ubiquitous white mold on the end of many bananas is saprophytic, meaning it only eats tissue that’s already dead; it won’t rot your fruit.

“It’s not pathogenic. It doesn’t cause decay,” said Jeff Brecht, a University of Florida scientist who studies how fruits and vegetables behave after harvest. He noted that the mold is on the “part of the peel that you remove and throw away. And it doesn’t get into the part you do eat.”

A fungus that doesn’t go after living tissue won’t advance into the rest of the banana. But other fungi aren’t so polite, so it’s still worth a quick inspection. If you peel the banana and it looks normal inside, it’s unlikely the edible flesh was kissed by the mold. 

Other types of molds will ruin your banana

Various types of mold tend to like the ends of bananas. The dried out wound where the banana broke from its bunch or the nub at the bottom where the flower was once attached provide “delicious” dead tissue for our saprophytic friends. Those places, as well as bruises or cuts, can also provide corridors for more aggressive molds to sneak inside the banana. Some use special tricks and chemicals to help breach the exterior of fruits and vegetables (or whatever their target is).

You’ll know a more aggressive microbe is blazing a trail of banana destruction if you see a forward-marching band of brown peel. You may also see growing clusters of white or greenish fuzz on the brown areas. And the flesh underneath it will probably look pretty bad. 

Here are some bananas succumbing to pathogenic molds: 

“The fungi that cause decay are species that are able to penetrate into and digest the tissue and colonize. They can go right through living, healthy tissue and cause a decay lesion. So that’s the difference between saprophytic and pathogenic organisms,” Brecht said. 

Can you prevent mold from growing on bananas?

Keeping a tidy kitchen and cleaning surfaces (or fruit bowls) when you do see a moldy food can help. But generally there’s not a lot you can do. Microbes are ubiquitous and produce can pick up mold spores anywhere from the farm to the air circulating in your home. 

“The microorganisms are around us all the time,” Brecht said. “And if they end up on plant tissue that allows them to grow, then they’ll start growing.”