Setting bananas together with your avocados will make them ripen faster than they normally would. And sealing bananas and avocados together in a paper bag will speed the process up even more.
Why is this? The reason is that fruit emits ethylene gas as a natural byproduct of the ripening process. Ethylene is a stimulant to plants, so many avocados or fruit packed together will ripen at a quicker pace than will a lone piece of fruit sitting on the counter.
Food suppliers take advantage of this by gassing avocados with ethylene when they wish the fruit to ripen. This is often done in a special room inside the store as soon as the fruit arrives. And it’s not done just for avocados but also with tomatoes, bananas, and many other types of fruit.
Bananas are known to give off a large amount of ethylene, and they are therefore one of the best fruits to use for this purpose. But almost any kind of fruit will help to speed up the ripening of an avocado.
The next time you buy an avocado that you wish to ripen more quickly, try putting it in a paper bag with a couple of bananas. You will see that its color will change more quickly and it will become inedible sooner than it otherwise would have.
Image- Avocado ripening illustration by Joseph Nicolia
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