What country eats more fruit?

On Christopher Columbus' travels to the New World, he never set foot in what is now the United States, but on his fourth and final trip, Columbus arrived in Central America, on a cape that is now part of the nation of Honduras.

Similar in size to the state of Pennsylvania, Honduras has a long Atlantic coastline and a shorter Pacific coastline. The name Honduras comes from of the depths of the coastlines and that enter between the hills and valleys of the Honduran coastline.

The population of Honduras is about 9,112,867 and is growing faster than any other nation in the Western Hemisphere. The hundreds of thousands of El Salvador's neighbors who have moved to Honduras count a lot in this increase.

Bananas are Honduras' main export. Hondurans eat more fruits per capita than people from any other country in the world, about 244 kilos per person per year, more than double the U.S. average.

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Where do oranges come from?

We can consider ourselves much more fortunate than the people of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Today we can enjoy a delicious glass of orange juice in the morning - while in ancient times there was not a single orange in all of Europe or Africa.

The orange has its origin in China, where it was already eaten before the year 2000 BC. Arab traders brought the orange to India and the Near East before the ninth century, and Muslims used to cultivate the fruit on the lands they conquered, including Spain, Sicily, and North Africa. The Crusaders brought the orange from Palestine to France, and by the late Middle Ages the fruit was well known throughout the Mediterranean.

The fruit that was grown at that time was not the sweet orange that we eat today. It was called the sour orange, which was smaller and less rounded than the sweet orange, with less juice, less sugar, and a characteristic sour taste. Today, this type of orange is grown mainly in Spain, and is used for jams and some drinks.

Sweet orange appeared in Italy in the 15th and 16th centuries, perhaps brought there by Italian or Portuguese merchants from the East. During the 16th century, the Spaniards brought the fruit to the New World and Florida. Today, Brazil and the United States are the world's largest producers of oranges.

The biggest orange on record weighed more than 1.8 kilos!

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Where do bananas come from?

The banana has been called the fruit that the man first met, it began to be enjoyed long before the story began.

The first banana probably grew in Malaysia and Thailand in Southeast Asia, and was spread by Chinese and Indian natives at a very early date. Alexander the Great and his soldiers who conquered parts of India in the 4th century BC were probably the first Europeans to eat the fruit.

In 1516, a priest brought the first of the banana plants to the New World, planting them on a Caribbean island. The banana grew so well there that it was soon planted in all the tropical regions of Central and South America. But bananas remained expensive in the United States until 1900, when traders found better ways to transport fresh bananas to the United States.

Today, bananas are the most popular fresh fruit. Americans eat more apples and oranges than bananas, but many of these apples and oranges are in the form of juices and prepared foods. Bananas are almost always eaten fresh. Each year, Americans enjoy about 12 billion bananas - about 8.6 kilos per person!

When the Puritan settlers settled in what is now the United States, and received a shipment of bananas for the first time, they boiled them with everything and the peel!

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