When you buy bananas, break them apart into individual bananas instead of leaving them in the bunch.
Why YSK: The stem of the bunch is the main culprit for releasing ethylene gas, which is basically a ripening accelerator. By separating them, you significantly slow down this process. This means your bananas will stay yellow and edible for far longer, saving you from having to eat a dozen bananas in two days or, more likely, throwing them out. No more premature browning, unless you’re specifically aiming for banana bread. Your fruit bowl (and wallet) will thank you.
Have you tested it? Thoroughly? Side by side in controlled conditions? Tell you what, I’ll post my sources. You post yours, and we’ll compare.
Source one - Ann Reardon tracked down the origin of this myth and put it to test. She’s got an actual degree in food science and makes it approachable for people without a science background. She shows clips of the bulk gassing. I got curious and tested it at home with a similar method to her except I used entire bunches of bananas and gave each bunch their own room to control the process more. I did control for sunlight and temperature as best I could do those were equal across the bunches. The fridge banana was indeed the only one that didn’t ripen at the same time as the rest.
Source two - a paper discussing how ethylene gas works to trigger ripening and that bananas (and other fruits) are picked green and then gassed with ethylene to control the process. It talks about how this gassing kicks off the process and once it starts there’s no stopping it because the enzymatic processes have begun and enough ethylene gas has already permeated the membrane. It also mentions needing hypobaric conditions to stop mature fruit from speeding up the ripening of immature fruit. Which a fridge although not negative pressure is closer than ambient.
Source three - External application of ethylene to induce ripening suppresses a bananas internal production of ethylene gas. It’s already producing less than it would on a vine because it doesn’t need to.
Okay now where’s yours?