Did you know that bananas are berries? Botanically speaking, they fit the jacket of a berry, as they are fruits coming from one single pistil, and the berries are soft inside, as are their seeds.
Many berries are really healthy, some of them even qualifying as superfoods, like açai, and the banana is no exception.
Bananas stand out for:
- Their carbs and fibre
- Because they provide a good amount of potassium and magnesium
- They are rich in vitamin B6
- They contain a lot of antioxidants
- Their phytosterols
- And they are a good source of tryptophan
Let's take a look at how these substances contribute to our good health.
Carbs and a low glycemic index
Bananas are deliciously sweet as they contain a good amount of sugar. These are the carbs that also provide us with a nice energy boost. Many high-carb foods make your blood sugar levels spike and then crash. Bananas, however, don't do this in such an extreme way. They have a low glycemic index. However, the riper they are, the higher the index gets.
Bananas contain a good amount of pectin fibre, which makes sure that we digest the sugars less quickly. When the sugars take more time to be digested, they get released into the bloodstream bit by bit, instead of all of it being released in a short amount of time. And therefore, your blood sugar levels don't suddenly go through the roof from eating a banana.
This is Jorge. He is holding red bananas from the Musa Sapientum species.
This is how they grow. Like yellow bananas they are rich in fibre, potassium, magnesium and Vitamin C, but they contain more beta-carotene and antioxidants than their yellow friends. They also have a lower glycaemic index (make your blood sugar spike less dramatically).
Our body converts beta-carotene into vitamin A and this vitamin supports the health of your eyes. Antioxidants protects your cells from getting damaged by free radicals.
Fibre
Fibres are actually carbs, but they are carbs that we humans cannot fully digest. Still, the beneficial bacteria in our gut love them! Their favourite fibre from the banana is said to be fructooligosaccharide.
Bananas are prebiotic foods, foods that the good bugs in the bowels love and on which they can thrive. For our health, it is crucial to have the right bacteria in our gut, and you can read more about it in my article:
The good bugs influence our digestion, how many nutrients we absorb, produce a few vitamins, help create hormones and neurotransmitters, and much more! The bad bugs don't do us these favours. They even generate toxins that can enter the rest of our body and help create disease.
Bananas provide a good amount of fibre and are thus a healthy addition to your diet.
Potassium & magnesium for proper functioning of our cells
A lot of magic happens in our cells. Here, energy is produced, hormones are created, DNA is copied, etc. A lot of this work is done by enzymes, and many enzymes need the collaboration of certain minerals and vitamins.
Another thing that they need to be able to function well is a high potassium, low sodium environment.
Bananas provide a good amount of potassium, helping to combat all the sodium (salt) that we eat. And they also provide a nice amount of magnesium. Magnesium helps a specific enzyme in our cells get the sodium out of there: the sodium pump.
Thus, potassium and magnesium help give our cells the proper environment in which the enzymes can do their work.
Sodium, potassium, and high blood pressure
When we have too much sodium in our body, this can generate high blood pressure. One of the reasons why is that when the body is high in sodium, it also keeps more water to try and dilute the sodium, so to speak. This means that there is also more water in the blood, and thus the volume of blood rises, creating more pressure in the arteries.
High blood pressure can contribute to issues with the heart, having a stroke, and other things you'd rather not experience in your life. Bananas thus help combat these issues because of the potassium and magnesium they provide.
Magnesium and detoxing
Enzymes are also very important in the detox process, to rid our body of waste products and toxic substances. These particular enzymes also really rely on magnesium as well as vitamin C and B6, which bananas also provide.
It is very important that the body can clean itself, because a body full of waste and toxic materials will quickly get sick.
Vitamin B6
This vitamin has many other functions besides supporting the detoxification process. It is also needed to form several neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, and thus it supports our mental health.
It is important for the immune system, the metabolism of amino acids and fats, and appetite regulation.
It is needed to synthesise haemoglobin, which carries oxygen in our blood, and insulin, which plays an important role in regulating our blood sugar levels.
When our blood cannot bring oxygen to our cells, we feel more tired because the cells can't generate enough energy anymore.
Normally, our pancreas makes insulin. When it fails to do this well, you get diabetes. Without the help of insulin, sugar can't enter your cells to be converted into energy. Again, we get tired.
Antioxidants
Antioxidants protect the cells in our bodies from free radicals. Free radicals are particles that don't have their electron ring fully filled with electrons. Because of this, they can react with cells in our body, and when they do this, they damage our cells. Ageing and many nasty diseases are partly caused by these events. Some examples are arthritis, diabetes, certain types of cancer.
Bananas contain several antioxidants. They contain quite good amounts of beta-carotene, which our body converts to vitamin A and supports, for example, eye health. Some other antioxidants in the banana are:
Vitamin C
Gallic acid. This is thought to support the liver.
Lutein. The riper the banana, the more lutein. This also supports eye health.
Lycopene. This has been shown to protect against prostate cancer.
Quercetin. This supports our cardiovascular system.
Phytosterols, reducing bad (LDL) cholesterol
We need cholesterol in our bodies, as it performs some very important functions. It is, for example, used in the production of certain hormones. However, cholesterol should be present in the right places. We should avoid having too much of it in our bloodstream. Cholesterol in the arteries can build up and create plaques (like plaque on your teeth), which narrows the arteries. Narrowed arteries mean that your blood pressure goes up. And when your blood pressure goes too high, you set yourself up for serious health issues.
To keep cholesterol in check, we should not eat too many saturated foods, and chole-sterol. And here our banana enters the scene; it contains phyto-sterols.
Phytosterols are structurally similar to cholesterol. Because of this, they compete with cholesterol to be absorbed from the digestive system into the bloodstream. When you have a lot of these phytosterols, a bunch of them will win, meaning that less cholesterol gets absorbed.
There are people who have high LDL cholesterol but don't tolerate the conventional drugs that lower it. For them, foods with higher amounts of these substances can be very beneficial.
Catecholamines
These are substances like dopamine and serotonin. We also know them as neurotransmitters. Dopamine provides you with motivation, enthusiasm, and pleasure, and serotonin provides you with a sense of wellbeing, peace, and a happy feeling.
Our body can produce them in the gut and in the brain. About 95% of serotonin is actually created in the gut.
To create dopamine, our body needs the amino acid tyrosine. To create serotonin, it needs tryptophan. Besides these amino acids, the body also requires a bunch of minerals and vitamins, some of which are B6, C, and magnesium, which the banana provides.
But our banana also provides ready-made serotonin and dopamine! As convenient as that is, we still also need our daily dose of tryptophan and tyrosine. These ready-made neurotransmitters cannot enter our brain. The brain is protected by what we call the blood-brain barrier. It lets only a few substances in, preventing, for example, pathogens from entering. If the brain wants to send dopamine or serotonin, it will have to generate it itself from tyrosine or tryptophan that are allowed to cross the barrier. Bananas provide tryptophan, so it helps your brain send out those serotonin-feel-good-mood.
Some other cool facts
Bananas originated in Southeast Asia but are now grown in most tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. There are many different banana species.
The average world consumption of bananas is 16 kg per person per year. The African and Latin American populations are far above average, with between 80 and 160 kg per person per year.
For many millennia, this fruit, and its peel, leaves, roots, flowers, and stem are used as medicine. The banana has emolient, demulcent, and antimicrobal properties. The flowers are astringent. Green, unripe bananas have often been used to treat intestinal issues.
The leaves can be used to help heal skin burns, and the banana stem is diuretic and can help get rid of kidney stones. Also, the high potassium content helps to regulate calcium levels in the body. Too much calcium can contribute to kidney stones. Calcium can then even be deposited in joints and arteries.
These are plantains at a market in Pisac, Peru. Most of the bananas that grow around me in the tropics are relatively small to the ones I used to buy in Europe. The plantains that grow here, are much bigger.
Plantains are used green and yellow. They can be cooked and then eaten. The more yellow they are before cooking, the sweeter the result is. They can also be fried and a friend from Venezuela even knows how to make plaintain peels into vegan ‘minced meat’.
Sources
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9740804/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/banana