Bananas are my favorite fruit for breakfast, whether mashed on toast or mixed into porridge. Yet I used to avoid buying them because they browned and softened very quickly, even when they were fresh from the grocery store.

I hate wasting food, so I had almost stopped buying it altogether, until the day I accidentally left my bananas on the counter instead of putting them in the fruit bowl. The next morning they were fresher and yellower than any other fruit I had bought recently. That’s when I realized that the fruit bowl is actually one of the worst places to store fruit.

After some further research, I learned that bananas are very sensitive to ethylene, an invisible gas produced by most fruits. While ethylene helps fruit ripen and develop flavor, too high a concentration in a given area can lead to the spoilage of surrounding fruits and vegetables.

Bananas last 10 days longer when stored with a single utensil rather than in a fruit bowl (Image: Katherine McPhillips).
Bananas release a significant amount of ethylene, and when stored near other ethylene-sensitive fruits like apples and avocados, this speeds up their rotting, according to Express newspaper.

While it may seem logical to store bananas in a fruit bowl, they often soften and ripen too quickly. I now store them in a corner of the kitchen counter, where they stay fresh for up to a week longer.

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