Bananas last 10 days longer when stored with one kitchen item instead of in a fruit bowl

Bananas are my go-to breakfast fruit, whether I’m mashing them onto toast or stirring them into oatmeal. However, I used to avoid buying them because they’d turn brown and mushy so quickly, even when I’d just brought them home from the grocery store.

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

Upon further research, I learned that bananas are highly sensitive to ethylene, an invisible gas produced by most fruits. While ethylene helps fruits ripen and develop flavor, too much of it in one area causes nearby produce to spoil instead.

Bananas release a significant amount of ethylene, and when stored near other ethylene-sensitive fruits like apples and avocados, this accelerates spoilage, according to the Express.