Culinary Historians | Bananas Above the Clouds: How the Japanese Taste for Sweetness Transformed the Philippine Highlands

When

Sunday February 15, 2026: 4:00pm to 5:30pm  Add to Calendar /   Add to Google Calendar

Where

Downtown Library: 4th Floor Program Room

Description

Japan is the only place in the world where bananas are marketed and priced by cultivation altitude: lowland, midland, highland, and super highland. In the late 1980s, plantation managers in the southern Philippines discovered that the higher up one grew, the sweeter the bananas became. The sweeter the bananas, the closer to the sweetness of colonial Taiwanese bananas, a taste that had been lost when Japan switched to Philippines suppliers. Professor Alyssa Paredes discusses how the “highland cultivated banana” was invented and how fruits have become commodities endowed with unique, prized characteristics.

Dr. Alyssa Paredes is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

This event is in partnership with the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor.

The Library will be providing a live stream of this event and we intend to make it available for future viewing. A video player will appear on this page 1 hour before the start of the event.