Why do bananas that are more ripe taste “sweeter” even though there’s no possible way that more sugar is being added?
In: Biology
Sugar is being added. Globs of starch break down into sugars, cell walls break and release fluid, a sticky sweet mess.
Why do glasses of ice water, when the ice melts, contain more liquid, even though no liquid is being added? Because the ice is melting (changing form) into water, meaning there’s more liquid despite the glass always containing the same total amount of stuff.
Likewise, when a banana ripens, the long chains of starches break down into simple sugars. Nothing is being added or taken away. There’s the same total amount of stuff, it’s just that some of that stuff is changing form to become sugars.
Bananas ripen and taste yummy when they do so that they get consumed when their seeds are matured. Of course, we’ve selectively bred bananas so that they don’t have seeds anymore.
The way that bananas get sweet over time is because of enzymes that break the complex carbohydrates — in this case, starch — into simple carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates is just sugar. Enzymes are able to work even after the banana has been picked from the tree.
> there’s no possible way that more sugar is being added?
What makes you say that? Ripening converts starch to sugar.
Because more sugar is being added, or rather created. In many fruits they first grow to full size filled with starch and then ripen through enzymes breaking the starch into sugar making it sweeter and weakening cell walls to make it softer. Ripening doesn’t stop because fruit is off the tree, everything required is already inside the fruit itself.
That’s not how it works in citrus fruits and most berries though, if those are picked too early they’ll stay bad.
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