Ripe Yellow Bananas in album fruit
Feb 27th, 2011, by Alex Zorach
These ripe yellow bananas were for sale at the Newark, Delaware farmer's market. They bore the Del Monte brand name. The greener bananas, some of the same table, were from the Bonita brand. Supermarkets and other food stores typically buy things in bulk from whatever brands are available and cheap, so what you see in a bin of fruit will often be a mix of different brands. Typically, one batch will ripen faster than the other, so mixing brands is a good way to ensure the fruit will ripen at different times, even if you cannot visually tell. In the case of bananas, however, it is usually easy to tell ripeness.
As a single person, I find it hard to eat up a whole bunch of bananas before they go bad, so when I buy them, I tend to (carefully) break off two or three ripe ones and then also buy two or three green ones.