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Bananas with edible peels now exist thanks to Japanese scientists

Science has gone bananas! According to the New York Post, a Japanese agricultural research company has developed a banana with a surrounding skin that’s entirely edible. The new banana, called the Mongee (pronounced mon-gay) is produced using extreme freezing and thawing that causes the fruit to grow rapidly, leaving the skin thin, like lettuce, instead of the thick, rubbery casing we are used to. In order to grow the freaky fruit, first the trees must be planted and grown in an environment with the temperature controlled at negative 76 degrees Fahrenheit. At just the right moment, the plants are left to thaw and replanted. The rapid change in temperature causes the plant to grow quickly — stunting the fruit’s ability to develop it’s trademark thick peel. Instead, the fruit has a thin “lettuce”-like texture, explained D&T Farm’s spokesman Tetsuya Tanaka. Regular bananas require temperatures of around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The idea for Mongees, Tanaka said, began as…