Ripening Bananas Using Calcium Carbide

Many of us love to eat bananas but do you know that the bananas we eat are harmful to our body?  The bananas available in the market are forced ripe by dipping in water mixed with calcium carbide.

Calcium carbide used for artificially ripening fruit.  When calcium carbide comes into contact with water it produces acetylene gas that hastened.  The gas get absorbed inti the bananas and within 24 hours all the bananas will be ripened at the same time.

Many of the banana vendors and farmers are looking to make more profit they do not care for the health of the people and the process they carry out to ripen the bananas might not exactly be up to the mark.  Or the banana vendors are not that literate and so they do not know the exact amount of carbide to be used for a bunch of bananas. As a result they end up using excess quantity of carbide which gas absorbed into the bananas and ultimately enters to our stomach.

The use of calcium carbide to ripen bananas is extremely hazardous to the human body as it also contains traces of arsenic and phosphorus.   These chemicals cause a variety of diseases, some of the I'll effects,  they are known hormone disruptors leading to an increase in the number of hormonal diseases.

The use of calcium carbide is not only toxic to consumers,  it may also be harmful to those who handle it.  It affects the neurological system, resulting in headache , dizziness and etc.

The practice of ripening fruits using calcium carbide us banned in most countries but it is freely and wipely used in Malaysia.   Calcium carbide is so easily to get at the rural shops at a very cheap price.

How to identify banana ripened using carbide calcium

• Bananas which are ripened naturally are dark yellow and there are small black or brown flecks here and there on the bananas and the stems are black. 
• While those which are forced ripe with calcium carbide are lemon yellow and their stems are green and the color are clear yellow without any brown flecks.   A hand of bananas that having a uniform yellow are most likely to have been artificially ripened.
  

So next time you buy bananas,  make sure you select the naturally ripened ones.