Turns out that bananas are evil – the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) was a force of imperialism in Latin America, and now they’re being decried for being a monolithic monoculture based on artificially low costs, achieved mostly through cheap labor in destabilized countries. But it wasn’t just the supply side of bananas that discovered how to manufacture shipping channels and puppet governments to keep the tropical fruit cheap: consumers had to start using them in their daily lives. This was achieved through massive advertisement to make the exotic and once rare delicacy into a staple of everyday meals, especially by touting their health benefits and usefulness in a variety of recipes. Even as recently as the 1960s bananas were being marketed not only for their healthfulness, but for the mere fact that they were the product of an industrialized international enterprise to bring the tropics to you.
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