Before you bite into an apple or sprinkle some berries on your cereal, you most likely give the fruit a good rinse. When it comes to bananas, however, you probably skip this step. After all, their peel is nature’s version of a screen protector—right?
If your banana has never known the kitchen sink, you might be surprised to see some TikToks encouraging people to wash the fruit post-purchase. The videos claim that fruit flies lay eggs on top of bananas, potentially causing that swarm in your kitchen, no matter the season. So: Should you rinse those potassium powerhouses to keep your kitchen tidy? We connected with several entomologists to find out.
First of all, it turns out the fruit fly infestation part is legit. While bananas aren’t inherently more attractive to the insects than other types of fruit, they do have a couple characteristics that make them particularly vulnerable, David Lowenstein, MS, PhD, a consumer horticulture educator at Michigan State University Extension, tells SELF. For one, they’re more likely to be stored outside of a temperature-controlled environment like the fridge, making it easier for the flies to access them. Second, they ripen more rapidly, meaning they start to attract pests earlier as decay sets in.
And those bananas aren’t just a food source for the insects; they also serve as an excellent nursery for their babies, which are actually at the root of the swarm problem here. Within around 24 hours of mating, female fruit flies can lay as many as 500 tiny eggs on surfaces like a banana’s peel. “You would need a good hand lens or a microscope” to see them, Dr. Lowenstein says.
But when those eggs hatch, they produce larvae (a.k.a. maggots), which, in turn, become brown, oblong pupae that will eventually yield adult flies. If this cycle completes, you could have a big problem on your hands. “Once you get just a few fruit flies inside, their populations can explode really quickly,” hence any potential swarms, PJ Liesch, MS, the director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, tells SELF. In fact, he adds, “you can even get overlapping generations, where you might have adults and eggs or larvae at the same time.”
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