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	<title>Dan Koeppel&#039;s Blog &#187; Banana</title>
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	<description>Bananas, Los Angeles, and Transit Geekery</description>
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		<title>Photo of the Week</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/29#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/29#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:17:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Finally back from Africa. Amazing bananas, amazing stories and photos. Exhausted. No blog entries, of course &#8211; but you&#8217;ll see tons over the next few weeks. In the meantime, thanks to my buddy Rich Snodsmith &#8211; also a shirt of the month contributor &#8211; here&#8217;s Trader Joe&#8217;s holding banana prices down. Bravo &#8211; especially considering that wholesale banana prices have more than doubled in that five-year period! Can anyone say &#8220;loss leader?&#8221; But wait &#8211; is that nineteen-cent banana really a bargain? Most other stores sell fruit by the pound. Generally, a supermarket fruit weighs a bit more than six ounces &#8211; you get about two and a half bananas per pound (sure, sometimes they&#8217;re smaller, but I&#8217;m assuming bigger because at TJ&#8217;s, you get to choose.) What about banana prices? These days, you&#8217;re lucky to pay 59 cents for a pound of the fruit in most cities. Sixty-nine cents seems to be the average, and a dime more isn&#8217;t unheard Here&#8217;s the math: At 59 cents for a pound, a single banana costs about 24 cents. Add ten cents to the bulk price, and you pay a bit less than 28 cents per fruit. Another dime at the scale, [...]]]></description>
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		<title>I Declare War on the Banana Diet!</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/40#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/40#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:05:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Recipes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Stupid]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/i-declare-war-on-the-banana-diet/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Homemade banana ice cream sammiches, Image from chubbyhubby.net We don&#8217;t have to sit by while the &#8220;Morning Banana Diet&#8221; marches across the planet, raising prices for the fruit and making emaciated zombies of us all. Here&#8217;s a brand new recipe &#8211; from the Chubby Hubby Blog &#8211; for homemade banana ice cream, served between brownie cookies &#8211; that I hope will be the beginning of a massive counter-strike against the craze that begin a few months ago in Japan. Banana tip: freeze them when they go brown. They keep for months, and you can use them to make all kinds of delicious stuff. Next in the arsenal: this banana pudding recipe &#8211; made with vanilla wafers &#8211; from the chitterlings.com soul food site (the recipe is almost at the bottom of the page.) We&#8217;re going to make some this week. Report, with pictures, to come. Thanks to my Dad for suggesting the recipe.]]></description>
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		<title>Insane Banana Diets Can Also Raise Prices &#8211; Which Proves Something</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/41#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/41#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 25 Oct 2008 09:55:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Stupid]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/insane-banana-diets-can-also-raise-prices-which-proves-something/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Lots of folks emailed me news items on this. Japan has gone nuts for the &#8220;Morning Banana Diet,&#8221; which promises to help you lose weight with this formula: you start in the morning with a breakfast of bananas and room-temperature water, then eat whatever you want &#8211; other than desert &#8211; the rest of the day. You can&#8217;t eat later than six in the evening. you don&#8217;t need to exercise, and people are going nuts. A half-dozen books on the diet have become best sellers, and the price of the fruit has shot up to over $3.00 per pound (more than quadruple what we pay in the U.S., and well over triple the average price in a Tokyo supermarket.) The backstory? An opera singer told a talk show she&#8217;d lost over 30 pounds on the banana diet. The craze began from there. Happy dieter, from a Reuters pic that accompanied a Time magazine story on the diet. A spokesperson for Dole &#8211; the nation&#8217;s largest banana importer (second largest in the world) &#8211; told Great Britain&#8217;s Daily Mail that this was &#8220;the first time bananas have been so scarce. Right now, we are finding ourselves unable to meet demand.&#8221; There [...]]]></description>
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		<title>The Banana Splits: A Freaktastic Television Show Returns</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/49#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/49#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 14 Sep 2008 09:54:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Split Watch]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Stupid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Weird]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/09/14/the-banana-splits-a-freaktastic-television-show-returns/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Photo: PR Newswire Readers from other countries, you&#8217;ll just have to take my word for it: &#8220;The Banana Splits&#8221; was one of the strangest things ever presented to children as entertainment. It was an NBC show with costumes created by Sid and Marty Kroft, who might best be described as Walt Disney, split into two by genetic mutation, dropped into a vat of ergot, and unleashed onto the world with at least temporary carte blanche to produce television for adolescents and potheads. Since I was the former, and the grownups in my house were the latter, I have warm memories of Saturday morning gatherings to watch this program. Four costumed creatures made up &#8220;The Banana Splits&#8221; (the name came from the rock band they formed; their jingle &#8211; also known as the &#8216;Tra La La&#8217; song &#8211; was so genuinely catchy that it was appropriated as the hook for Bob Marley&#8217;s &#8220;Buffalo Soldiers.&#8221;) The quartet are Fleegle the Dog, Drooper the Lion, Bingo the Gorilla, and Snorky the Elephant. They live in a Banana Pad and drive in their Banana Buggy, which is more than most people in the banana world can say. In a press release, Warner Bros. executive [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Chiquita Acknowledges Panama Disease as Threat</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/53#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/53#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:43:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Chiquita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Dole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/chiquita-acknowledges-panama-disease-as-threat/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Panama Disease-ravaged plantation in Asia (from Plant Health Progress.) In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre &#8211; for the first time &#8211; publicly acknowledged the existence of Panama Disease (the incurable malady that wiped out the world&#8217;s banana crop in the first half of the 20th century, and that has devastated much of Asia over the past two decades) &#8211; in relation to his company&#8217;s mainstay product, though he downplayed the threat to the point of barely admitting it existed. The story is headlined &#8220;New banana disease poses threat: How serious is open to debate.&#8221; In it, Aguirre described the disease as &#8220;limited,&#8221; and asserted that &#8211; when the disease arrives in Latin America &#8211; quarantine measures would &#8220;pre-empt and prepare&#8221; the advance and effects of the malady. I was interviewed for the story, and I disagreed, pointing out that such measures had failed most everywhere they&#8217;ve been tried in the past. Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Photo by Steven M. Herppich. I was glad to see that the reporter, James Pilcher, also contacted Randy Ploetz, the scientist who is probably the world&#8217;s best authority on the fungus. Ploetz is less grim and [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Report: First Field Test of Genetically Modified Cavendish</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/60#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/60#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:46:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Dale]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/07/24/report-first-field-test-of-genetically-modified-cavendish/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Australian banana researcher James Dale. Image: QUT Cavendish is our supermarket banana &#8211; the one that&#8217;s under threat from the newly-remerged Panama Disease (see here for more info.) The Cavendish banana is absolutely seedless and sterile, so it cannot be bred conventionally; the only sway to ensure its future as a commercial fruit would be through genetic engineering (the alternative would be to allow the Cavendish to die out and replace it with a different &#8211; and as yet unidentified &#8211; banana variety.) Now, according to a news report from the Australia Broadcasting Company, a project spearheaded by Australian scientist James Dale, who runs the Queensland University of Technology&#8217;s Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, has begun the field test of such fruit &#8211; the first time lab-modified Cavendish have ever been put to large-scale outdoor trial. The test, the story says, will be &#8220;to improve the nutrient content and disease resistance of Cavendish bananas.&#8221; Australia is in desperate banana straits right now, having lost much of its crop to poor weather and a subsequent Panama Disease attack. The field tests are partially being funded by a grant from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Dale, by the way, prefers to use [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Heroic Clerk Saves Store from Banana Attack</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/68#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/68#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:13:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Stupid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Weird]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/heroic-clerk-saves-store-from-banana-attack/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Battles Banana-Wielding Thug. In my book, I note that one observer described the banana as a &#8220;weapon of conquest&#8221; in Latin America. This doesn&#8217;t apply in Maryland, where a would-be thief attempted to use the fruit to rob a 7-Eleven &#8211; and was denied by a brave clerk. Incredibly (or maybe not so incredibly), this isn&#8217;t the first time this has happened &#8211; and the last time, the guy got eighteen months in the hoosegow for his malfeasance (third item down.)]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>Co-opt. Subvert. Destroy.</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/69#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/69#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:14:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Stupid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/co-opt-subvert-destroy/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A bigger threat to the banana than any disease. The world&#8217;s favorite fruit is the cheapest and healthiest alternative to junk food. So what would the junk food industry do? This: Gotta go try one.]]></description>
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		<title>Read my article on Panama Disease in &quot;The Scientist&quot;</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/76#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/76#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:15:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Science]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Latest Book News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/read-my-article-on-panama-disease-in-the-scientist/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The most controversial part of my book is my assertion that biotech is key to saving the banana. I came by this assertion with a lot of difficulty &#8211; initially believing that most genetic engineering in our food supply was a bad thing. But, as usual, the issue isn&#8217;t black and white. With bananas, the shade of gray is especially green. Read the piece here.]]></description>
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		<title>Wired magazine: Frankenfoods, good; Hippie foods, bad?</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/80#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/80#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 20 May 2008 16:41:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/wired-magazine-frankenfoods-good-hippie-foods-bad/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[First good. Second, not so good. More or less, maybe, according to the May issue of the science/tech/culture publication, because: GMO agriculture may have a smaller carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops. Organics may have a larger carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops. In my book, I note that the promise of organic bananas is far less than we&#8217;d wish it to be &#8211; and the potential of GM bananas has been so undervalued (and so feared) as to be a factor in creating hunger in banana-dependent populations worldwide, as well as contributing to the reduction of genetic diversity in the global banana crop. .]]></description>
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