is it safe to eat overripe bananas?
Over ripe bananas are not only safe to eat but are also quite beneficial for your health. They’re quite rich in vitamin c and antioxidants, and are known to not cause harm to a human’s body. Moreover, even if the outer peel develops some dark or brown spots, the flesh inside is termed as edible.
Overripe bananas might not look quite as good as a perfectly yellow banana, but they are still totally safe to eat. While overripe bananas might not actually seem that appealing–the fruit turns watery, and the banana skin can become black or brown–they are extremely healthy. Once your bananas are overripe, they can have high sugar content, but by just pairing them with low-digesting foods like peanut butter, nuts, whole-wheat bread, protein powder in smoothies, oatmeal, or yogurt, they can still be a healthy food. Bananas often spoil shortly after being placed into the fruit bowl, developing brown spots, skin splitting, and bruises that can leave you wondering whether or not they are still okay to eat.
They are more commonly enjoyed raw as breakfast or a snack, and they can be cooked–whether baked, caramelized, or flamed–when they are ripe, or even overripe. Unfortunately, bananas are shelf-stable, with varying shades of color day-to-day. As Bananas mature, the skin changes from green to yellow to brown, the starch inside of these fruits turns into sugar.
Brown spots on overripe bananas occur when chlorophyll in the fruit begins to breakdown and turn to antioxidants. The skin of a ripe banana is yellow with lots of brown spots, and the flesh may have small brown patches as well. A yellow banana with some brown spots is completely fine, but widespread browning or moldiness of the peel (especially near the stem) can mean that it is best not to eat.
| Is it safe to eat overripe bananas? | How do you know if bananas are bad? |
| They are absolutely safe to consume in fact they contain more antioxidants than the younger ripe ones. | If it has a musty smell, fruit flies, mold on the stem, then it has gone bad. |
| Eating an overripe banana is not harmful unless you are diabetic. | You can easily tell by its overall look that this banana is no worthy of eating! |
If the interior of the peel has a large number of brown or black spots, or you see mold, toss the banana. If your banana is completely black with mold or fruit flies, it is unsafe to eat and you need to throw it out. You likely do not want to consume an all-brown banana, or even black, and as we learned, you want to avoid any mold.
Ultimately, so long as your banana is mold-free, and is not slimy or too soft and slimy when you remove the skin, you are fine eating a brown banana. To be clear, just because your banana is brown on the outside, or has spots, does not mean that the fruit inside is not perfectly safe to eat. A perfectly ripened banana that has browned spots is perfectly safe to eat, because these brown spots have no effect on its quality, and in fact enhance its flavor.
By the way if you’re interested in Can Bananas Make You Sick, then check out this article.
Bananas that are completely brown can be extremely soft — even somewhat liquid — but so long as the banana does not exhibit any other problems, it is still safe to eat. That is because brown bananas have gone far enough in the ripening phase that brown banana starch has converted into sugar, enhancing flavor while also preventing any sticky or starchy texture from adversely impacting your baked goods. Bananas are still safe to eat once they have reached their ripeness — and are particularly great to use for baked goods, since according to Mayo Clinic, bananas will increase their sugar content when ripe.
You can keep bananas from ripening too much by making sure that you are not storing them with other ripe fruits. To minimize the amount of vitamins and minerals lost, you are better off keeping the ripened bananas in a cooler.
To learn about Can You Get Sick From Eating Bad Cucumbers, then check out my another article.
If you notice your bananas are about to turn bad, you can freeze them to save them for later. Once your bananas reach the banana-ripe stage (have a nice yellow colour with few brown spots), then you can move them into the freezer; this will prevent them from turning black, and will most of the time guarantee they last one to two weeks.
A ripe banana will have yellow skin covered in brown spots, smell sweetly banana-y, and be about as texture as a ripe avocado. Because an overripe banana, which is still safe to eat, may have an extensive amount of black coloration on its peel, it is difficult to determine whether the banana is too ripe to eat just from appearance. Many people will get anxious when faced with the thought of eating a banana that has gone overripe — in laymans terms, simply a banana that has developed brown spots, or is nearly black, and has a mushy texture.
When the banana loses firmness, it becomes difficult to eat it as a snack, but can be crushed up and used in many frugal ways. Eating a banana in this phase of its lifecycle does not do any harm, except when it shows any obvious signs of mold, in which case you should toss the fruit.
While eating an overripe banana is not harmful unless you are diabetic, you may want to simply avoid it if you are eating fruits for a daily dose of vitamins and minerals. You should only eat overripe bananas in moderation, so you are making sure that nutrients are helping your body, not hurting it. To eat right away, select bananas that have little patches of black in their skin, a sign of ripeness. Those who have type 2 diabetes may eat green bananas, whereas perhaps unripened ones are not so compatible.
As we mentioned before, resistant starch and a lower sugar content in green bananas makes it the best choice for successful weight loss; however, since it is a lot harder for you to consume it everyday, yellow bananas are truly an ideal choice. Oxidized bananas, although perhaps less attractive than they are in their sunnier, yellower forms, are totally fine to eat. As bananas age, they emit more ethylene gas, which causes them to turn brown, eventually turning to black spots and streaks.
Fermented bananas should never be made with bananas that are bad, blackened, or that have molds either inside or out. Bananas that are black, rotted, or have mold should never be frozen, and they may make you sick. Soft, non-rotten bananas that are starting to spoil or are going sour are a great addition to smoothies, and they make for a naturally sweet ice cream.
Can overripe bananas make you sick?
Certified nutritionist Andrea Picincu wrote in an article for Livestrong that bananas with a musty smell, fruit flies, mould on the stem, or signs of rot and decay are no longer safe to eat. The health risks associated with an overripe banana, on the other hand, are negligible.
How do you know if bananas are bad?
The banana should now be thrown away if it has a musty smell, fruit flies, mould on the stem, or any other sign that it is about to rot and decay. An overripe banana full of flavour is one of the best things in the world. This natural sweet snack is perfect for satisfying sugar cravings.
What happens if you eat brown bananas?
This is what? Bananas that are a dark, almost black color appear, well, disgusting. But according to Chiquita, the brown beasts contain more antioxidants than their younger, fairer brethren, despite appearing unappealing in the fruit bowl. They are suitable for baking and safe to eat as long as there is no oozing or mold.