Perhaps I'm getting paranoid in my old age, but I could almost swear there's something different about bananas nowadays. In earlier years, it seemed like if you threw a half-eaten banana or a peel on the ground, 24 hours later it'd be completely black and well on its way to just disappearing due to decomposition. But lately I've noticed that discarded peels take much longer to even turn black, much less rot away.

About a week ago I picked up a half-eaten banana that someone tossed into my garden and put it in my worm bin. I just happened to look in there yesterday and it still looks just as fresh as when I found it. Is it possible something's being added to bananas as a preservative?