Flavored Bananas

Chiquita plans costlier, tastier bananas.

It seems that every time I pick up some sort of fruit juice these days it's one of these funky "mixes": banana-apple-kiwi or pineapple-cranberry-rambutan or whatever. I'm not exactly sure what the excitement is about mixing fruits, but apparently it's leaving the drink space and moving into the actual fruit. It's not completely out of the ordinary. For years, people have been mixing plums and apricots and turning them into pluots/plumcots/apriums. However, the Chiquita banana people aren't just trying to merge two different fruits. They want to keep the banana, but add other fruit flavors to it. They see it as a sort of "designer" banana -- akin to the Starbucks of fruit. In other words, just like the Tall Mocha Frappaspresso or whatever it is they call slightly modified coffee at Starbucks these days, you'll be able to buy (noticeably more expensive) Banalama or whatever they decide to call their multi-flavored banana.