So I was at the banana museum, admiring the many curved fruits, when I noticed a chart displaying “O Valor Nutritiva do Banana”, listing the amount of fat, sugar, fibre and so on. I neglected to get a picture of it, but you can see it at the very bottom of this page.
So um… What? Why would cinzas (ashes) be in a banana? I puzzled it out and decided it means “potassium”. OK, OK, hear me out. We were in a museum so it seemed at least possible that the tabke was very old. When potassium was first discovered it wasnt really understood but it was known to be alkaline and to be present in ashes. In fact the name “potassium” comes from “potash”, a compound derived from wood ashes. So maybe at some point along the timeline people knew that this unidentified stuff was in a banana but they hadn’t got around to giving it a name yet.
Apparently, I was overthinking it. Cinzas, when it appears in a nutritional chart, jusy refers to the literal ashes or unburned inorganic residue left over when the food has been dried and the fats etc burned off. They can be analysed to figure out what minerals are in there but for some reason, that hadn’t been done by whoever made this table so they have just aggregated the potassium, sodium, calcium, magnesium, etc into one item: cinzas.
Luso 