The Banana Apology

Fyffes. The Times 
(London, England), 
Wednesday, Jun 05, 1940;
 pg. 3; Issue 48634 

Despite this pithy endorsement from Professor L. Jean Bogert, PhD, and the fact that it was advertised as “protective food,”* bananas were classified as a luxury import in 1940s wartime Britain.  This status made it rather cost prohibitive to bring bananas into the country, and if they did arrive, they were so expensive, that few (and certainly not common) folk could afford to buy them.  However, even while heavily engaged in the throes of war, overstressed and overworked members of the British War Cabinet, and specifically the Joint Planning Sub-Committee, were always prepared to be magnanimous.  Two months later, after evidence revealed that the banana certainly was high in vitamins, it was removed from the list of restricted imports and allowed freely into the country for consumption by the masses.  Following this embarrassing error, the committee “took note, with approval, of the high vitamin content of the banana” and “withdrew, with apology, their charges against the banana.”[1]  It’s comforting to know, that even during this troubling time, the above assertions of the banana’s new status were properly documented and footnoted within the top-secret world of the minutes of the Sub-Committee meetings. 

*  Protection of self was certainly on many minds in June 1940.  Just three days earlier Leo Amery, Secretary of State for India, recorded in his diary a suggestion made by Mr. Horabin “that it would be both actually and psychologically far better if every citizen carried a couple of hand grenades than if they went about carrying gas masks.”[2] 

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[1] The National Archives, Kew (TNA), CAB 84/2, 5 August, 1940, 217a

[2] Churchill Archives, Cambridge, Leo Amery Personal Papers, AMEL 7/34, 14 June 1940.