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[–] 83 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

Bananas are a mono-crop. There was a disease in the latter half of the 20th century that threatened all bananas on the planet. A particular strain survived called the Cavendish. It is what you NOW think of as a banana. The candy tastes like the way bananas used to taste.

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  • [–] 57 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    counterpoint: https://youtu.be/I9ZtvpBoXzI

    TL;DW banana candy does not taste like gros michel either

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  • [–] 43 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    He did find that the artificial banana flavor tastes the way gros michel bananas smell when they're very ripe, though. So I don't think it's wrong to say the flavor is based on the gros michel rather than the cavendish, it's just that flavor is a really complex equation and artificial flavors tend to fail to capture the totality of the experience.

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago

    This is the same reason tomatoes are borderline impossible to emulate artificially. Instead of one or two volatile chemicals that create the aroma, there is something like twenty different compounds that makes tomato-flavour.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Yeah it's only with grapes that they really captured the best part

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    I have never had fake grape flavoring that didn't taste like some kind of soviet-era urinal cleaner, is that just a me thing? Do people really like grape flavouring, and my dislike stems from a horrible repressed childhood trauma or something?

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Where I live, grape flavour is not common at all. The few times I tasted it, I didn't like it. It tasted super artificial and not like grape at all.
    Buuuuut, when I was in Romania I ate some thick skinned, round, fleshy grapes that taste exactly like the candy grape flavour. They were good actually

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago*

    I hate grape flavoring as well, and always have. Actual grapes? Delicious. Raisins? Also great. But candy pretending to be grape flavored just feels like a chemical approximation of the worst flavors in a grape.

    Cherry is also shit. I love cherries, my ideal relationship is where I get the cherries from the milkshakes and give the pickles from whatever. But cherry flavored candy or soda or whatever, unless it’s a nice place and they’re just pouring maraschino juice in your drink, tastes like being 6 and being forced to drink cough syrup.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    When I was a kid, I didn't like cherry flavour for similar reasons, but for some reason, as an adult my tastes changed and it's alright.

    So I think grape flavour is generally just you, sorry to say. I certainly like it alright. :)

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago*

    So I may only love it because it was my mom's favorite flavor so I have good memories of being a kid and picking grape stuff to share with her. But yeah I love the flavor. It's definitely one of the more divisive of the popular artificial flavors though.

    I can't comment on it tasting like a soviet urinal, I'm not quite kinky enough to know how that tastes.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    It literally tastes like the color blue.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't know I've never done enough psychedelics to experience synesthesia. And idk if I can, I suspect the I would go away before tasting colors starts from my experience

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    it's a joke, the Japanese didn't historically have a differentiation between blue and green. They 'recently' added a word for it, but still call green apples by their old blue term.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago*

    Can confirm. I went on a banana adventure during the pandemic where I ate nearly 10kg of all sorts of different bananas, including the "Big Mike". I learned the Cavendish is a shit banana and we've been cheated out of superior nanners for decades.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    There are still places you can get the good bananas but they are not very common anymore

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah and unless the guy who made the above video got ripped off, they're roughly $100 a dozen 😬

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Just go to South America, there's a million kinds of banana and they're all dirt cheap.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

    Fun fact: trips from Denmark to any part of South America tend to cost in excess of $100 too.

    Also, I'd probably have to do a layover in the US, which isn't exactly safe for anyone who isn't a rich white right wing Christian lately and I'm only one of those things..

    I'm not curious enough about alternative bananas to risk being thrown in a concentration camp in order to sample them..

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