The Canned Fruit That Should Stay Out Of Your Shopping Cart

Say you're about to whip up a bunch of fruit salad or some banana cream pie. If all of the bananas at your grocery store are green, you might tempted to look for a can of them instead. Before you do, take note. This popular fruit made the wrong side of our 6 Best and 6 Worst Canned Fruits to Buy at the Grocery Store.

Timing perfectly ripe bananas can be a challenge. Like avocados, they tend to go from "not yet" to "too late" awfully fast. But if they're canned when they're ripe, they're already on their way to being mushy. What's more, packing them in water or sugary syrup (which adds extra calories) will only make them soggier. There's also no guarantee that they'll keep their attractive creamy yellow color. If you're baking with them, that's not a problem, but if they're the star of your recipe, you definitely don't want them to look brown.

Bananas are grown in tropical regions all over the world, typically in places with low labor costs. Unlike many crops, they don't have to be replanted every year, and each tree can grow up to 240 bananas. All of these factors have kept them very affordable, at about half the price per pound of apples or oranges. With the extra costs of processing, it's unlikely that canned ones could compete at a price level. Using a canned form wouldn't save you much labor, either. Peeling might even be faster than opening a can. 

All in all, we can't see any reason to skip buying fresh bananas. At worst, you may have to put them in a paper bag to ripen a little quicker. And if they happen to get overripe, you can always use them in pancakes and waffles or freeze them for the next morning's strawberry-banana smoothie.