The Great Banana Epiphany

The humble banana holds two very secretive secrets.

The first is that bananas are radioactive!

There is a scientific abbreviation known as BED or Banana Equivalent Dose which is used to explain the exposure of materials as a guide to radioactivity.
Bananas contain an isotope called Potassium-40 or K-40 to scientists. And this gives off radiation.

Eating one banana will give a dose of radiation rated as 0.1sv.

To put this into perspective if you were to have your arm x-rayed you would receive 1sv in a single dose.

Or if you eat 10 bananas then you will receive the same amount of radiation as you would from sitting in front of a computer screen for a whole year.
But don’t panic because the person you sleep next to at night is poisoning you with the same amount of radiation as half a banana.

So don’t sleep with a banana and you should be okay.

The other important thing about bananas is that they have not evolved in other 7000 years.

Even at a genetic level these yellow berries (that’s right berries not fruits) are as genetically diverse as ... something that is not diverse at all... and may become unviable for export within the next 10 – 20 years.

The most popular Banana is the Cavendish and it is one type of banana that is susceptible to the horrible sounding Banana Bunchy Top Virus (BBTV).

So in conclusion.

Bananas COULD give you cancer but don’t worry because they may all be gone by the mid 2030’s – they are full of vitamins and minerals but can be twice as dangerous as sleeping next to a complete stranger. – so I will give bananas 6 out of ten.