olivetalks

I’m not trying to be funny. The title is not a metaphor. I am indeed questioning if bananas (or bananes or plàtans or plátanos or banany or Banane or… however you call them) are worth the crisps (or chips or papes or papas or chipsy or chrupki or…). And she went bananas, my sister would say…

Bananas are good for you. They have bla bla bla and you should eat them. Ok, but their taste… they are like too mushy and after you eat them you have this weird after taste… But they say they are good so a few years back I discovered a way that helped me not mind eating them so much: I eat them alongside crisps. Preferably wrinkled and salty crisps. A bite of a banana and a crisp, another bite of the banana and another crisp. The saltiness and taste of the crisps combine perfectly with the taste of bananas. They do!

So every time I buy a kilo of bananas I buy myself a big bag of crisps. And so I’ve been doing for the last few years. Then, two days ago, the question popped into my brain totally unexpectedly. Are bananas worth the crisps? Let me put it more clearly: is eating a handful of crisps, with all their “badness” ok as long as I eat a banana with all its “goodness”? If you are a mathematician like my sister or the guy in Numb3rs, you will have spotted an equation with two unknowns in the previous question. If you didn’t spot it, well, it just means you belong to the less geeky group of people that visit olivetalks. In any case, it will be clear for everybody that without knowing the extent of the “badness” of crisps or the “goodness” of bananas, we cannot solve the mystery of whether bananas are worth the crisps.

Why, oh why do we have to solve this mystery? Because now that I’ve wondered it I cannot continue eating crisps alongside my bananas without feeling that it might be actually worse than not eating bananas at all! So, go to the kitchen, grab a banana and a bag of crisps and let us eat, I mean analyze.

Wow! there is a banana page!! Check it out: banana.com! I like their banana favicon Anyway, according to that page and this other one, bananas have – depending on their size – between:

• 450 and 600 mg of potassium
• 80 and 140 calories
• 1 and 2 grams of proteins
• 3 and 4 grams of fiber
• 25 and 35 grams of carbohydrates
• 7 and 9 mg of calcium
• 40 mg magnesium (both pages state the same value)
• A bunch of vitamins, including A, B and C

All that in one banana.

On the other hand, 20 g of crisps, which is the amount think I eat per banana, have:

• 106 kcal
• 1.3 g proteins
• 9.8 g carbohydrates
• 6.8 g fat

As always, without a calibrated scale, measurements don’t really mean anything. So, the recommended daily allowances are about:

• potassium: 4700 mg
• calories: 2,200 – 2,500 kcal
• proteins: 50 g
• fiber: 25 g
• carbohydrates: 300 g
• calcium: 1000 mg
• magnesium: 400 mg
• fat: 70 g

Hmmmm… so… it should be ok? I remember something about the fat being the source of the problems if it was unsaturated… or something like that… Aha, check this page from Bupa on diet and nutrition: it basically says that if the fat is saturated, like it is usually in crisps, then it should be avoided. Oh dear… Ok, this is actually funny:

Coconut and olive oil are the only vegetable oils that are really safe, but butter and lamb fat, which are highly saturated, are generally very safe (except when the animals have been poisoned). Source: HEALL’s Community for Body Mind Soul Earth Well Being Resources

At least the animal part is funny . So basically, avoid foods cooked with oils other that olive oil. I know, I won’t avoid coconut oil.. if I ever see it. Jo, que rollo, I like my dose of crisps with the bananas. Bummer, what am I going to do?

I guess to start with, I should really stop eating these crisps. I mean, I did finish eating the banana 2 hours ago…