This s–t is bananas! 
 
 A Japanese agricultural research company has developed a banana with an edible peel. 
 
 Called the Mongee — pronounced “mon-gay,” which is slang for “incredible” in Japanese — the freaky fruit is grown using an extreme freezing and thawing process. According to D&T Farm’s spokesman Tetsuya Tanaka, the idea began as a research “hobby” for technical development manager Setsuzo Tanaka and evolved from there. 
 
 First, scientists plant and grow banana trees in an environment kept at negative 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Then, the team thaws and replants them. The change in temperature encourages the plants to rapidly grow, and leaves the fruit with a peel that has a texture like “lettuce,” Tetsuya says. (Regular bananas are usually grown in temperatures around 80 degrees Fahrenheit.) 
 
 D&T Farm claims they have exceptional nutritional qualities. “Banana peel is an excellent ingredient,” the company’s English website reads, adding that the peels may contain vitamin B6, magnesium and tryptophan. 
 
 That’s all good and well, but what do they taste like? 
 
 According to D&T’s website, Mongees are sweeter than their traditional relatives, with nearly five more grams of sugar per fruit. Tetsuya adds that, unlike the exterior of ordinary bananas, Mongees’ peels don’t taste bitter. 
 
 Journalists at the Tokyo-based website RocketNews24 tested them out last month and found that they had a “very strong tropical flavor,” like a pineapple. In an article, they describe the skin as “very thin,” with “no strange texture” and “fairly easy to eat.” 
 
 For comparison’s sake, a RocketNews24 reporter later bit into a regular banana — skin and all — from Ecuador. Predictably, he found the peel inedible. 
 
 Unfortunately, Mongees probably won’t be cropping up at C-Town anytime soon: Production costs are so high for these bananas, only 10 of them go on sale each week in an Okayama prefecture department store in western Japan, averaging at a wallet-busting $5.75 apiece. “We are also considering export [to the US], but it is likely [to take a while,]” Tetsuya says. ||||| Published on Sep 29, 2013 
 
 If you want to see Patrick get owned by a Banana Peel, watch this! This is from the episode 'Funny Pants'. Spongebob tells Patrick that he can't laugh, and guess what Patrick makes him do? 
 
 I didn't make this TV show, all credit goes to the owner and maker. 
 
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 This video is owned by Paperkirby2011 and don't copy it! ||||| We get our hands on the mystical Mongee Banana. 
 
 If you’ve ever been to a Japanese department store in August, when they’re selling mid-year gifts, you’ll know that fruit can fetch some pretty high prices in Japan. High-end fruit can cost upwards of the equivalent of US$100, and at any time of the year, even basic grocery store fruit like apples and pears can, for certain varieties, cost $2 or $3 each. Nevertheless, fruit makes up a delicious part of Japanese food culture, but what would you think is the most consumed fruit in Japan? 
 
 The banana, of course! It’s no wonder since it’s easy to eat, cheap, and tasty. Japan imports 99 percent of their bananas from overseas, but part of the one percent that is produced in Japan is the Mongee Banana (pronounced “mon-gay”). 
 
 The Mongee Banana is a very special banana. It’s only grown in Okayama Prefecture, and they only sell 10 bananas per week. One banana costs 648 yen (about US$5.75), but the most interesting thing about this banana is that you can eat the skin! 
 
 We were able to get their hands on some of these bananas, so they gave them a taste test. What does an edible banana peel taste like? Let’s find out! 
 
 About the mystical Mongee Banana 
 
 Mongee Bananas are produced at D&T Farm in Okayama Prefecture, in western Japan. Typically bananas only grow in tropical climates, but D&T Farms uses a method called “Freeze Thaw Awakening”, which extracts and implements the DNA of fruits in order to produce specimen similar to ancient times, which then allows them to be grown in a cooler climate. Bananas produced in this way were successfully grown for the first time in November. 
 
 Since they’re raised in a non-tropical climate, they don’t have any natural predators, which means no pesticides are used and Mongee Bananas are organically grown. They’re sweeter than regular bananas, with 24.8 grams of sugar, as opposed to the average 18.3 grams. Because of that, they’re also stickier and have a much stronger smell. That’s probably why they gave it the name “Mongee”, since “mongee” is Okayama slang for “incredible”. 
 
 You can only find Mongee Bananas in the Fruit Corner of Tenmanya Okayama, an Okayama department store. They only get one shipment per week of just 10 bananas, but they were generous enough to send us some for tasting. 
 
 The first thing we noticed: The skin is very thin 
 
 Actually, before we could eat the bananas we had to wait for them to ripen. Apparently, they’re only ready to eat when you start to see little brown dots on the surface of the skin, unlike regular bananas, which are ripe before this stage. The Mongee Bananas took about two days after arrival to ripen. Meanwhile, the smell was getting stronger and more tempting. 
 
 Once it was ripe, Japanese-language correspondent P.K. Sanjun’s first inclination was to bite straight into the banana, but he suppressed his animal desires and first tried it like a regular banana. Upon peeling it he realized that the skin is relatively thin compared to a regular banana, so he thought it was reasonably edible-looking. 
 
 With a rising excitement he bit into the fleshy innards of the banana…and found it has a very strong tropical flavor. P.K. even said it’s almost pineapple-like, with a scent that just wafts right up through your nose to hit your taste buds. It’s definitely not a normal banana. 
 
 The edible skin 
 
 Next the crew wanted to try the skin, so P.K. sliced up another banana with the skin still on. On the first bite we noticed that the skin is fairly easy to eat. Since it’s very thin, there’s no strange texture, and compared to the sweetness of the banana there isn’t much flavor to the skin. So the Mongee Banana truly does have an edible skin. Mongee!! 
 
 ▼ Though some of our staff enjoyed it more than others. 
 
 ▼ P.K. was the only one brave enough to just eat the skin…he said it was bitter, but not inedible. His face reveals his real thoughts about eating a banana peel, though. 
 
 To really understand how special the edible skin was, P.K. went to the convenience store and bought an ordinary banana, imported from Ecuador, with the intention of trying the skin. But that was a mistake…it was far too tough and fibrous, and the flavor was far more bitter and astringent. Conclusion: regular banana peels are not meant to be eaten. They might also be covered in pesticides, so we really don’t recommend eating them. 
 
 So let it be known, the Mongee Banana is definitely special! This top class, genetically enhanced, tropical-flavored banana is probably going to be difficult to get your hands on, but if you find yourself in Okayama, be sure to take a peek in Tenmanya. These bananas are really “mongee”. Oh, and in other strange food news, apparently dropping a raw egg in your coffee is a thing. Who knew?! 
 
 Images ©SoraNews24 
 
 [ Read in Japanese ] ||||| Most of the world’s bananas are grown in tropical temperatures that consistently hover around 80°F (27°C), but D&T Farms in southern Japan keeps its banana trees at a frigid -76°F (-60°C). Then, the farmers replant the trees in an 80°F environment. The result of the wildly different temperatures is enough to encourage the plants to jolt into a state of rapid growth, producing a banana with a peel that doesn’t entirely mature, making it thin, soft, and sweet enough to eat along with the regular part of the fruit. 
 
 This bizarre method of production is called “freeze thaw awakening,” and results in a banana with a perfectly edible—even delicious—peel. The fruit—called the Mongee banana—is now available in extremely small, 10-banana batches sold each week in a regional Japanese retail outlet called Tenmanya Okayama. The fruit go for a whopping $6 per banana. Supplies of the banana are extremely limited, but the company is interested in expanding, as it recently posted job listings (in Japanese) on its website for new banana farmers. 
 
 As it is in many countries, the banana is the most popular fruit in Japan. And like most other countries, Japan imports the vast majority of bananas it consumes—99% to be exact. The Mongee banana could be a way to help grow that domestic 1% of the market. D&T Farms, based in the southern prefecture of Okayama, boasts on its website that it grows its bananas without pesticides and that the edible peel provides extra nutrients (some good, some bad), including tryptophan, vitamin B6, magnesium, zinc, and more sugar. 
 
 According to Japanese media, the Mongee banana has 24.8 grams of sugar, much more than the average banana’s 18 grams or so. Taste-testers at Rocket News 24 said the fruit had a very tropical taste to it, with a scent reminiscent of pineapple.
– About the only thing banana peels were good for up to this point were comedy pratfalls and composting. A farm in Japan appears to have changed that, producing a banana with a tasty edible peel thanks to what Quartz labels a "bizarre method of production." The technique used by D&T Farm to create the Mongee banana is called "freeze thaw awakening." The process involves starting banana trees out in an environment that's nearly minus-80 degrees Fahrenheit, then moving the trees with their still-ripening bananas to a more temperate climate of around 80 degrees—an environment banana trees typically grow in the entire time. The extreme temperature variation puts the banana's growth into a sort of hyperspeed mode, so the peel doesn't fully mature, leaving it with a texture like "lettuce," a D&T Farm spokesman says, per the New York Post. Taste-testers for the RocketNews24 site in Japan say the banana fruit itself—which has about 5 more grams of sugar per banana than the regular version—boasts a "very strong tropical flavor" akin to that of a pineapple, but using the descriptor "edible" for the skin may need tweaking. Although it's said not to have a "strange texture" and is "fairly easy to eat," the tasters add there "isn't much flavor"; one experimenter even said it was somewhat bitter, though not as much so as the peels of regular bananas, which he also tasted. Not that most people will get to sample it: The Mongee banana, which comes in batches of 10, is currently being sold in just one regional Japanese outlet, with each banana going for around $6. (These scientists flew across the world on a failed banana quest.)