Bananas bleed red fluid

For Caleb Cleland the colour of food probably isn't a big deal, even if it is oozing red stuff. After munching his way through four bananas on Saturday morning, the New Zealand toddler looked like he had just had a date with a volatile batch of red felt pens.

That is what his mum, Anita Bisset first thought, when her son appeared in her bedroom, face, hands and PJs all covered in red ink. "It was really bright red, it looks like dye and it is really hard to get off your fingers," Miss Bisset said.

She did not know about the lurking red stuff until she went to have a banana and found herself in the same position as Caleb – not red faced, but red-handed at the very least.



"It's quite random. As soon as you touched the banana [it leaked red]. I thought someone had contaminated them."

Unlike her son, Miss Bisset lost her appetite immediately. The imported Bobby-brand bananas had been purchased from the Timaru Pak 'n Save.

Foodstuffs' general manager of retail operations Alan Malcolmson said he was as baffled as Miss Bisset about what the red gunge was, or how it got into the fruit. As far as he was aware there were no other reports like it, but said the company's food safety people would be put to work to find an answer to the problem.