Bananas Are Bad For You!

Well, here's one you may not have heard: bananas are bad for you. Okay, not really, but I needed to catch your attention, and it seems to have worked... haha!

But seriously, they are kind of bad for you. Let me explain.

Like many foods, bananas naturally contain some radioactive isotopes. In fact, it contains enough of those for the U.S.-based think tank, Nuclear Threat Initiative, to warn that they can trigger sensors used at U.S. ports to detect smuggled nuclear material. Sounds like a lot, no? Turns out, a typical banana contains 0.1 microsieverts of radiation. To put that in context, a typical CT scan in a hospital exposes humans to between 10 and 15 millisieverts, which is about 100,000 times more.

Also, everybody knows bananas affect your potassium levels. Well, if the level of potassium in the body is too low or too high, it can result in an irregular heartbeat, stomach pain, nausea and diarrhea. Potassium chloride is even one of the chemicals used in lethal injections in the U.S., as extremely high doses of it can cause cardiac arrest. Adults should consume about 3,500 mg of potassium per day, according to the UK's National Health Service. The average banana, weighing 125 grams, contains 450 mg of potassium, meaning a healthy person can consume at least seven and a half bananas before reaching the recommended level. However, there are some people who should steer clear of foods that are high in potassium, namely those with kidney disease. Patients on dialysis can have heart attacks from eating too many potassium-rich fruits. This isn't a big concern for a healthy human being, though, as they'd probably need about 400 bananas per day to build up the kind of potassium levels that would cause their heart to stop beating.

So yes, bananas can be bad... if eaten in ridiculous quantities. Still, so long as you only eat a few per day, you will be doing your body nothing but good.