Why Storing Bananas Next To Other Fruits Makes Them Spoil Faster

Are your bananas getting ripe too quickly? While this may be good for making the best brown butter banana bread, it's not great if you're hoping to eat all those bananas while they're still fresh. Who knew that putting bananas in a bowl with other fruit could make them get ripe faster? Well, scientists for one, and now you do too. The reason behind this is due to the ethylene gas produced by the fruit and how it helps make all the other fruit in the bowl ripen faster. Storing that bowl of fruit in a warm, sunny place will speed the process even more. Thankfully, you can do a couple of things to slow those bananas down and prevent them from turning brown as fast.

Some fruits, such as apples and bananas, give off more ethylene than others. This is why they say to put fruit in a bag with an apple if you want it to ripen faster. This method traps the ethylene in the bag with the fruit rather than dissipating into the air. Another hack that helps ripen fruit faster is covering it in dry rice, a trick sometimes used to ripen mangos.

So if you want to slow those bananas down and make them last a little bit longer, get them out of the fruit bowl. Instead, store bananas alone in a cool, dry place. Cover the top of the bunch of bananas with foil to prolong their life even longer. This will help contain the ethylene gas, preventing it from ripening the rest of the banana.Some other fruits will stay fresh longer if you refrigerate them — including bananas, though you shouldn't refrigerate underripe fruit. Cooling them down significantly slows down ethylene production, which gives you more time to consume the fruit or use it in your favorite recipes.

You can throw bananas in the refrigerator to slow ripening, but you should know a few things. Cooling the tropical fruit that way will cause it to turn brown, and there's some science behind that, too. While the lower temperature slows down the ethylene process that causes ripening, it releases polyphenol oxidase, which reacts with phenols in the banana skin, causing it to turn dark brown.

It's still safe to eat a refrigerated brown banana, though you'll want to check it and make sure it's not old or bruised. However, refrigerated brown bananas just don't look appealing, and most people won't want to eat them that way.