WEBVTT - Short Stuff: Artificial Banana Flavor 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:06.720 Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's 0:00:06.840 --> 0:00:10.479 chuck where the banana splits and this is short stuff. 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:13.960 Let's go. I thought you were gonna say we're bananas 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.720 for banana flavoring. I should have I think we should 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:22.599 retake this whole thing. Frankly, no, no way, not not 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:26.400 by a million years years. Was better than mine. Uh, 0:00:26.440 --> 0:00:28.920 this is a good episode. Hats off to you for 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.480 putting it together. Thank you, But the hats really come 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.040 off to a few a handful of astute listeners. Chuck, 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.120 because I had no idea about this until in our 0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:45.000 watermelon episode. If you'll remember, you started talking about how 0:00:45.920 --> 0:00:50.519 just far off like banana candy flavor is from actual 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:53.720 banana taste, and I was like, you're absolutely right, and 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.360 they just like they just missed the mark so badly. 0:00:57.000 --> 0:00:59.880 But after we we talked about that, um, we didn't 0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.800 e lies. We'd accidentally stumbled into kind of like a 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:07.480 overlooked history of at least flavor science, if not pop 0:01:07.520 --> 0:01:10.280 culture that some of our listeners wrote in, say, guys, guys, 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:15.119 get this, that banana flavoring actually is really dead on 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.200 to a banana that we don't eat anymore. It was 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:21.720 created back at a time when there's this banana that's 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.360 not around any longer was popular. And that's why it 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:27.000 seems weird to us because it doesn't taste like bananas 0:01:27.000 --> 0:01:30.560 we eat today. And I just started tearing at my 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:32.760 clothing and shaking my head left and right. I was like, 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:34.840 gott to get a short stuff out as fast as 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:37.760 possible about this delirium, said, and when you heard there 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.880 was an O B that's right, an O G B 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:46.520 that's right. Uh. And that banana, my friends, is called 0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:50.800 is it Michelle m the gross Michelle g R O 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:53.960 S M I C H E L. That was a 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.240 banana grown in the mid of the beginning of the 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:02.720 mid nineteenth century by off he grow in Jamaica. And uh, 0:02:02.760 --> 0:02:04.520 we would you know, Big Mike would be his name 0:02:04.560 --> 0:02:07.200 here in the States. But it was gross Michelle. And 0:02:07.280 --> 0:02:11.080 this stuff was great for sitting around the world because 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:13.120 it grew in little tight bunches. It was very thick skin, 0:02:13.600 --> 0:02:16.400 it was very slow to ripen after he picked it off, 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:19.600 and so it was really good as a as a 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:24.880 shipping fruit until disaster struck in that right. Yeah, So 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:29.079 so I think in the eighteen seventies around then the 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.680 gross Michelle like became the dominant banana and that lasted 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:36.040 all the way. That's how it's right. That lasted all 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:39.799 the way until the nineteen fifties when something called a 0:02:40.040 --> 0:02:44.160 Panama disease or banana wilt, which is a fungal disease 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.720 that attacks banana plants um and it's caused by a 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:54.600 fungus called Fusarium oxy spoor um form us. Specialist Cuban say, 0:02:55.040 --> 0:02:58.720 and it aroused the dead or something. I look out 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:03.359 behind you, chuck um and Uh, this particular soil dwelling 0:03:03.400 --> 0:03:07.440 fungus really munches down on banana crops. And so after 0:03:07.560 --> 0:03:13.680 seventy years of market dominance, the gross Michelle went basically 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:18.120 extinct in less than a decade because this banana wilt 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:23.080 just took hold and spread through the banana crops like wildfire. Yeah, 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:25.680 which is a problem when you have a monoculture, when 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:30.400 you have all these identical essentially plants and you have 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.360 a fungus that attacks it, Uh, you're gonna have no 0:03:33.440 --> 0:03:37.560 more bananas or any sort of monoculture. So, like you said, 0:03:37.600 --> 0:03:40.280 within ten years it's gone went from the O B 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:46.800 to the NOBI And everyone said, we gotta get a 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:50.400 new banana. We invented the cavendish, and that's what we 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.040 eat today. It's another monoculture, so something else comes along 0:03:53.400 --> 0:03:57.120 that's trouble. But the cavendish is resistant to Panama disease, 0:03:57.600 --> 0:04:00.720 and so far, so good. We're the cabinash is doing 0:04:00.760 --> 0:04:04.560 pretty well. Yes, but there they've identified a couple of diseases. 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:08.320 The cavendish is not um resistant too, and so if 0:04:08.360 --> 0:04:11.000 those diseases ever took hold, we'd have the same problem 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:13.280 all over again. So the banana growing industry does not 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.280 learn lessons very well. And that cavendish is if you 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:20.400 are eating a banana today, basically anywhere in the world, 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:26.719 there's genuinely a chance that banana is a Cavendish, because 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:31.200 not only is the cavendish the most widely grown variety 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:36.680 that supplies the world's bananas, um the the cavendishes that 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:39.839 are grown are actually clones of one another. Because it's 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.599 really really hard to get a banana to get sexy 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:46.560 with another banana, so they use clones. They take rhizomes 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:50.080 from one plant plant that grow another plant, and so 0:04:50.279 --> 0:04:52.640 those plants are clones of one another, meaning they're not 0:04:53.160 --> 0:04:59.400 very genetically dissimilar, they're pretty much identical. And um, that 0:04:59.440 --> 0:05:02.080 means that if you have a disease that can take 0:05:02.080 --> 0:05:04.039 out one of those plants, it can take out all 0:05:04.160 --> 0:05:06.760 those plants. And so the Cavendish, like you said, is 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:09.640 in the same position that the gross Michelle is. We've 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:13.320 just lucked out by not happening yet. That's right. So 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:17.839 the top banana is gone, second banana is now dominant, 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:20.120 and I think that's time for a break before I 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:24.200 think of another bad pun, and we'll be right back. Well, 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:28.159 now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.520 to learn a thing or two from Josh can Chuck. 0:05:31.839 --> 0:05:58.040 It's stuff you should know, all right, alrighty, so now 0:05:58.080 --> 0:06:01.680 we're at the part where we talk about banana candy 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.080 and everything from an Hour Later's I'm sorry now and 0:06:05.240 --> 0:06:07.520 Laters always said an hour Laters when I was too 0:06:08.360 --> 0:06:13.000 now and Laters, which is really that's a huge sea change. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.400 And I think about it, yeah, because they're saying like, 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:19.360 have them start now, and you're gonna be chewing them 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:21.679 later still too, because they don't go away very fast 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:25.080 or runts or Nico wafers, any of that stuff. You've 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:26.960 probably eaten it and said, this really doesn't taste like 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:29.120 a banana, and like you mentioned the beginning, it is 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.520 because it doesn't taste like a cabinish. Apparently it does 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:35.880 taste like a gross Michelle. And there is a very 0:06:35.960 --> 0:06:41.680 nuanced story to why. Yeah, because the gist of the story, 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:45.080 the legend as it goes, is that they created this 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:50.440 banana flavoring to to mimic the dominant banana at the time, 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:53.200 the gross Michelle. The gross Michelle went extinct, but this 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:56.560 banana flavoring carried on. And so to those of us 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.000 alive today who've never had a gross Michelle, it seems 0:06:59.040 --> 0:07:02.040 weird and foreign. But it's not like the chemists like 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:06.839 extracted gross Michelle and then injected into the candy and 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:09.680 then that's where banana flavoring came from. It's, like you said, 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:11.720 the whole thing was a lot more nuanced than that. 0:07:11.960 --> 0:07:15.360 And in fact, they developed this artificial banana flavor and 0:07:15.400 --> 0:07:18.720 then tinkered with it to make it mimic the gross 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:22.840 Michelle um, which as we'll see, they apparently did pretty well. Yeah, 0:07:22.880 --> 0:07:26.239 so there was believe it or not, there's a banana 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:30.080 flavoring researcher. I think just general researcher, but an author 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:34.040 named Nadia Rubinstein who did a lot of research on this, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:38.840 on this story and trace the development of the banana 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:42.640 flavoring back to nineteen twelve by these New Jersey chemists, 0:07:42.680 --> 0:07:49.240 the I guess the Fritz brothers. Sure, Fritcha. It's like 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:53.480 Fritz and mixed together scch. It's kind of a weird name. 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:58.440 But they said that Frish she Fris the Freshi brothers. 0:07:59.360 --> 0:08:01.760 But they were from New Jersey, so they didn't take 0:08:01.760 --> 0:08:05.080 any guff and they didn't didn't want anybody poking around 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:10.200 their banana synthesizing operation. But uh not. Eve Rubenstein found 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:13.840 out that they did isolate from real bananas and that 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.360 they were they had to have been gross Michelle because 0:08:16.400 --> 0:08:19.760 that was the again, the top banana. Right, So you say, well, 0:08:19.760 --> 0:08:22.880 then the story is true. They took gross Michelle essence 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:26.040 and put it into candies. Still not quite right, because 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.040 it gets a little more convoluted than that, because what 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:32.760 they extracted from the gross Michelle and identified as basically 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:39.000 banana essence is a chemical compound called amal ascetate. And 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:42.320 it's not just found in bananas, it's found in other 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:44.880 fruits and it's actually one of the other fruits that 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:48.200 it's really kind of predominant. It is pairs and um. 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.200 Rubinstein found from a research that depending on the company 0:08:51.240 --> 0:08:54.959 you're buying from and the decade it was, uh amal 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:58.800 ascetate would be marketed in their catalogs either as banana 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.880 essence or pair essence, and that over the years it 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:04.160 eventually is just kind of evened out into a generic 0:09:04.280 --> 0:09:09.440 fruity essence because it's it is. It depends a lot 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.800 on the power of suggestion and the nose or tongue 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:16.440 of the beholder what fruit evokes. Yeah, and this is 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.600 I think where it gets super cool because, uh, if 0:09:19.640 --> 0:09:21.720 you live in the UK, you probably eat a little 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:26.000 more pear than banana, or at least historically or culturally, 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:28.000 that's sort of the deal. Then you might hear in 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:31.559 the United States, I think Americans eat like what like 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:33.800 a hundred and thirty bananas a or something like that. 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.280 That's everyone around the world. Yeah, but the UK is 0:09:38.320 --> 0:09:40.760 big on their pears and pear flavor things. So if 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:45.560 you take the very same exact vial of that what's 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:49.080 it called again, amial ascetate, amial acetate, he's sticking under 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:51.800 the nose. First of all, you say, get that beer 0:09:51.800 --> 0:09:53.560 pine out of your hands so you can smell something 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.480 for a change, And they say, all right, and you 0:09:56.520 --> 0:09:58.880 put that vial under the nose of someone from the UK, 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:06.400 they'll say, tastes like pears. Put that same vile under 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:08.920 an American. First of all, you smack the the cheap 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:12.240 light beer out of the American's hand and you put 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.560 that under their nose, and they'll say it tastes like 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:19.080 a banana. And it's the same thing, right, It's the 0:10:19.120 --> 0:10:22.680 same vial. It all depends on what you've been exposed to. 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:26.080 Remember we were talking about like like Gray candy having 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:29.319 banana flavor. If you would even be able to recognize 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.160 this banana flavor, like I was right in a really 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:35.319 roundabout way, which I was sure super love that kind 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:39.760 of thing, um, because you you you have to basically 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.920 tell people this is banana candy, this flavor, it's banana flavor. Um. 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:49.040 And the thing is, though, is they really did kind 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:54.080 of nail the taste of gross Michelle with this um 0:10:54.080 --> 0:10:59.280 amial acetate. Because upon later inspection, food science and flavoring 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.480 science has gotten exponentially more sophisticated than it was back 0:11:02.480 --> 0:11:06.840 in n when the Fritzie Brothers were working UM and 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:10.600 they found that that Gross Michelle bananas had more of 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:15.280 a related compound called iso amal acetate than the Cavendish does. 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:20.640 And UM that because of this kind of thicker concentration 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:25.400 of amal acetate in this this banana flavoring, it evokes 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:28.640 the Gross Michelle way more than it does the Cavendish. 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:31.400 And like you said, beyond his food scientists, there is 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:35.920 a a banana grower in Hawaii that does grow that 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.360 top banana, the o G banana, the Gross Michelle and 0:11:39.440 --> 0:11:41.640 they went out, you know, the BBC interviewed this guy 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:43.800 and he was like, They're like, well, what it was 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.280 the Gross Michelle taste? Like he said, it tastes like 0:11:46.320 --> 0:11:49.520 that fake banana flavor. Yeah, it tastes like a runt 0:11:49.520 --> 0:11:52.679 to basically. Uh. And then and he said, you know, 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:54.800 when I first tasted, it made me think of banana flavoring. 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:57.120 So I want to get my hands on one of 0:11:57.120 --> 0:11:58.880 those Gross Michelle. I want to go to Hawaii and 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:02.280 and check this thing out. Yeah. Same here. Next time 0:12:02.280 --> 0:12:04.319 we're in Hawaii, Chuck, I'll bring you back some Gross 0:12:04.360 --> 0:12:07.920 Michells because they're great for shipping. That's right, You just 0:12:08.000 --> 0:12:10.520 drop one in the mail. Yeah. I will put some 0:12:10.520 --> 0:12:13.599 stamps on it and send it to you. Ah, you 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.959 got anything else about gross Michelle or banana flavoring. No. 0:12:17.160 --> 0:12:20.560 I thought this was super interesting. Me too. I've loved it. 0:12:20.600 --> 0:12:23.240 So thanks for all the to the listeners who wrote 0:12:23.280 --> 0:12:26.679 in to let us know about this wonderful little story. 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:29.520 Uh and in the meantime, everybody's short stuff is out. 0:12:33.160 --> 0:12:35.440 Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:38.480 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:41.440 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:12:41.480 --> 0:12:42.199 favorite shows.