Banana Nutrition Facts

Bananas have several benefits that might make you want to put them in your mouth more often.

Yes, bananas offer benefits besides being used to practice your deep-throating skills on!¹Go to a social media site, like Twitter or Instagram, and check out #bananachallenge for…ummmmmm…research purposes.

Yeah, research!

For one, bananas supply two key forms of fiber. One is soluble fiber that turns into a gel-like substance and expands in your stomach when mixed with water. This helps to slow digestion and can result in the consumption of fewer total calories on account of the feeling of fullness lasting for longer after a meal. Additionally, soluble fiber is known to lower bad cholesterol, control blood sugar, and decrease the risk of heart disease. The other type of fiber are prebiotics, which keep the digestive system working and promote overall health by providing sustenance to the good bacteria in your gut.

Also in the favor of bananas is potassium. What makes that of importance is that the essential mineral supports heart health by helping to manage blood pressure. How it does this is with a two-pronged approach. First, potassium increases the amount of sodium that’s removed through the urine. And then when there’s less excess sodium in the bloodstream, the blood vessels release water rather than retaining it, which helps lower blood pressure by easing the tension in the blood vessel walls.²Along the lines of stopping the retention of water and salt, potassium also helps with PMS bloat, which is caused by hormonal changes associated with those issues. So yeah, if you’re a woman, you now have a secret weapon against one of your punishments for eating the apple!!!

Now, if you’re bored by the above benefits because you don’t give a fuck about your health or managing your weight, then consider the following. In a study of cyclists, bananas were found to increase the performance time of a 75-km trial by 5 percent compared to water. In addition to that objective improvement in cycling time trials, bananas also had a subjective effect, as the participants reported feeling more energetic and a greater ability to focus while exercising. These results largely stem from the sugar profile of bananas, with them providing fructose and glucose that the body can quickly break down for energy. Something else that bananas are laden with are phytonutrients with antioxidant properties, which helps explain the reduction in inflammation that was also observed in the study. So not only do bananas improve exercise performance but they also enhance recovery.³The study also included pears, which had similar but less pronounced performance and recovery benefits than bananas versus water. For more, see Nieman, DC, et al. “Metabolomics-Based Analysis of Banana and Pear Ingestion on Exercise Performance and Recovery.” 𝘑𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩, vol. 14, no. 12, Nov. 2015, pp. 5367–5377. doi: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.5b00909

With that information in hand, that’s your cue to peel a banana from the tip of the stem and place the exposed fruit in your mouth as sexually suggestive as possible.⁴You can also just throw a banana in a smoothie and suck, suck, suck!

Banana Nutrition Facts
Serving Size 1 medium (118g)

Glossary: calories, exercise, hormones

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Monster Longe

Monster Longe is a personal trainer in San Diego. He has been lifting weights for +25 years and training clients in the gym and online for about half of that time. When not working with clients or making content that's easy to read, understand, and apply to everyday life, he enjoys long walks and leaving buildings crushed and entire city blocks decimated in his wake.

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