‘Just say no’. Or actually don’t. Because bananas are a force for good

A theory has been doing the rounds for years that suggests too many bananas can kill you.

The theory comes from the notion that bananas are rich in potassium, and too much potassium is dangerous for humans.

The more extreme banana theorists believe that six is the absolute limit – seven tips us into the danger zone.

Others put a different number on it, but they still believe the banana to be a botanical berry with a licence to kill.


Yup, they really think that.

A lethal cocktail? Or actually totally delicious? (Picture: Malibu)

Just have a look at Yahoo! answers, where people swear blind they know someone who knew someone who died from eating too many bananas.



Or this ‘health’ website, which tells its readers that eating ‘more than a dozen in a day’ could lead to emergency dialysis (since it is the kidneys that process potassium).

It doesn’t help its PR that the lethal injection is made of a potassium solution either.

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But you know what? We have to call BS on this one.

It is physically impossible to eat a fatal dose of bananas.

One banana contains about 400mg potassium – and we need more than ten times that (4,800mg) to be healthy.

Potassium is good for us – it keeps our heart, kidneys, blood and nervous system healthy.

In ultra-large doses, potassium slows the heart and cause kidney failure (hence why it is used in the lethal injection).

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES (Picture: Getty Images)

But a normal, healthy person could not get a fatal dose of potassium through food – and certainly not through a few bananas.

A fatal dose of banana would, in theory, be around 400 bananas.

Catherine Collins, a dietician at Kings College London told BBC recently that to ingest enough potassium to kill you, you’d have to eat around 400 bananas at once.

That’s all at the same time.

Which would be pretty hard.

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Your intestines would also have to be able to absorb all of the potassium from the bananas at that instant, and your kidneys, which are very effective at processing potassium, would have to stop working.

In short, you cannot eat a fatal dose of bananas – unless (there’s always an exception to every rule) you are suffering renal failure and are on dialysis, in which case a strict low-potassium diet is necessary to prevent potassium build-up.

Oh yes – there’s another tale you might have heard too – about the radioactivity of bananas?

Not a big deal either.

Pretty much everything is radioactive. We are radioactive. And bananas, as most foods, contain a minute amount.

According to Quora, you’d have to eat 10 million bananas at once to die of radioactive poisoning.



You could also experience chronic symptoms by eating 274 bananas a day for seven years.

Good luck trying – you’d probably die of boredom first.

We will leave you with this:

Over and out.

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