The Affair of the Lone Banana

Anyone recognise the title? Titled for my brother Geraint, as a matter of fact, who I can practically guarantee will know it.

Oddly appropriate for the day though. |Got up at 7 this morning and worked on an enormous edit for about five hours. At which point, remembered I hadn't eaten anything. I knew we were going out to lunch with Ma at 2pm, and really didn't feel like eating much. I mooched around the kitchen for a minute and a half though, and spotted one lone banana which had been unable to cling to our banana tree (oh yeah, all mod cons in our kitchen!) without the support of its fellows.

I fell on it, and chewed it slowly, feeling an odd, marginally profound connection to our simian cousins.
"Ook," I said to myself when I'd finished. I faced away from the recycle bin, and flung the yellow and mottled fruitskin over my left shoulder. A soft impact noise told me it had landed where it should have. 

"Ooooook," I said, feeling like the Hairless Ape Who Could. Then I went back to my edit till it was time to leave for lunch.

"This was in my paper," said Ma, proffering a smallish booklet. Ma calls it a paper, bless her, but it's actually the Daily Mail, a sort of instruction pamphlet for Who To Hate This Week, for the kind of British person who would be a Nazi, but is too fond of committees to ever really commit. She normally only gets it these days for the Money Advice column. Honest, Comrade!

Anyhow, I looked at the booklet she was holding out to me.
"HOW MUCH SUGAR IS IN YOUR FOOD?" it demanded.
"Thanks?" I asked. "Now I can know my calorific crimes as I commit them," I thought.
Now, the Mail loves a good list. Lists appeal to lots of different types of people - I'm a Doctor Who Geek, they appeal to me massively. But they also appeal to Daily Mail readers, especially when it looks as though people, things, nations or even entire continents can be blamed for stuff. Blamed for the fall of society or for political correctness gone mad, most especially, but blamed, at a push, for anything.

So this booklet, which basically was a manual of depression that showed how many teaspoons of sugar could be found in a whole lot of everyday foods, had a list, up front. "TOP 5 SURPRISE VILLAINS" it proclaimed - see what I mean? Any time it can blame anything or anyone for something, the Mail will do you a good solid list.
Top of the list of super-villain foods - A BANANA!

Now many of you (I say "many of you" nonchalantly, as if there are in fact "many of you") will know that my general choice for a Disappearing breakfast is three Weetabix AND A LONE BANANA. Turns out that two Weetabix have half a teaspoon of sugar in them. SO three, presumably have three-quarters of a teaspoon of sugar in them.

How many teaspoons of sugar do you think a single banana has (according, it is important to remember at all times, to The Daily Mail)?

7.

Yes, 7. Seven whole teaspoons of sugar, in a cunning yellow jumpsuit - Basically, every time you slice a banana over your cereal, you're EATING ANNEKE RICE!

I did the maths of course - I could eat a breakfast of 28 Weetabix for the sugar-price of a solitary lone banana. And don't think I haven't, in my time!

So - apparently, and unless you rational folk can tell me different to the Mail - that's bananas off my list of safe snacks then. I haven't actually had the courage yet to check what else is on the Mail's Most Wanted List. If The Evil Lone Banana turns out to have an accomplice called The Pink Lady Apple, I might just pack in fruit altogether and start eating worms instead.