Today, as I dropped my son off at his daycare, another parent mentioned that her little 5 month old had just tried bananas. It was clearly a big milestone for the family: their little girl tried a fruit after a month of just cereal. I know that bananas are likely the first fruit of choice in most American households. They are easy to mash up, require no cooking and have a sweet, bland taste. Now that I am packing toddler lunches, I admit that I often fall back on them. On my mornings of hurried lunch bag filling, it is easy to rip one off the bunch and jam it in next to the yogurt and cheese slices. And they are cheap.
I still can't figure out why bananas are as cheap as they are, and I'm sure the answer will make me uncomfortable as an aspiring conscientious consumer. They need to be shipped from tropical locales. Yet they can cost less per pound than the apples that come from right outside the city. Bananas also require a startling amount of fertilizer per cultivated acre (427 pounds versus 35 pounds for peas or beans). So why is the cost of that fertilizer not passed along to us? Even this superficial consideration of the economics points to another unsettling truth: bananas are not a good environmental choice. Imagine the carbon footprint, given the transcontinental diesel shipping! So, why do we as American families, continue to serve our children bananas, when we could serve them locally grown apples or low-fertilized green peas? I'm not sure why bananas continue to be such a staple in this country, but one reason, for sure, is that they have cornered the market as a first food.
Apples, pears and plums all have their place in the baby fruit pantheon here, I suspect largely thanks to prepackaged Gerber purees. While citrus is not common here, my research shows that Kenyan mothers do feed their 3 month olds oranges. Indonesian mothers serve porridges fortified with both banana and papaya. I know your own mother-in-law identified watermelon as a common baby fruit in Taiwan. Have you found any other fruit traditions? Bananas make more sense to me as a baby food in Indonesia or Ecuador...there, they are locally grown. This may be the last week of bananas in my own household. Good thing my kid likes apples!
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