Bread made from "saved" bananas

Roughly one third of all bananas that are transported to Germany are thrown away. They are not suitable for being sold in supermarkets although they actually are nourishing and tasty. The start-up “Be Bananas” from Düsseldorf only uses those fruits as ingredients that were supposed to be discarded. Studierendenwerk wants to set an example against food waste and sells the vegan cake-like bread in all coffee bars and cafeterias.

Gregor Neumann, head of the Studierendenwerk dining services, supports the young company’s business idea: “We calculate the food purchase in a way that there is as little food waste as possible. We are happy to pursue this strategy by offering this delicious and morally valuable sweet dish.” Its sweet taste is solely created by the ripe bananas. The bread is available in four different flavours: Natural, blueberry, apple-cinnamon and white chocolate with macadamias.

The whole range of products consists of twelve different flavours. The founders Lars Peters and Tim Gudelj got the idea of selling banana bread in Germany when they were in Australia. There, the bread is very popular and common. The aspect of saving food was added later: “When we visited the warehouses of middlemen we were shocked about the huge number of bananas that is thrown away just because they are too ripe to be sold in supermarkets. Especially those ripe bananas are perfect for baking the bread as they contain a lot of fruit sugar”, explains Lars Peters. Since 2013, he and Tim Gudelj have saved 85 tons from being thrown away. By selling the banana bread in Studierendenwerk they will be able to save even more in the future.