Lately, a bunch of health conscious people and blog posts advocated eating banana peels (wholly or everything but the outside layer). Is this the latest wave of broscience or there’s some truth to the claims of valuable nutrients and compounds in banana peels?
@gf Sorry for the late replay, I somehow missed this. Interesting, I had never heard of this so I looked it up. I found a study that used crude banana peel (M. paradisica) extracts of unripe, ripe, and leaky ripe banana fruit. The study found that the banana peel extract had hydrogen peroxide scavenging activity, so it basically serves as an antioxidant. Here is the study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3644576/
It looks like it’s packed with … stuff. Do you think L-dopa does more than just being an anti-oxidant? Unfortunately I’m not sure I can interpret these results (or even access the full papers right now) but:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf9909860
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814609009819
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814606007023