The EU’s infamous “curved banana law” is both real and completely misunderstood
Commission Regulation (EC) No. 2257/94 — the infamous “bendy banana law” — really does exist. According to Wikipedia, the 1994 European Union regulation specified that bananas must be “free from malformation or abnormal curvature.” British tabloids had a field day. The EU became synonymous with banana-straightening bureaucrats.
The actual regulation is more boring than the legend. It applies only to unripened green bananas sold by growers and wholesalers, not to retailers or consumers. “Extra class” bananas must meet the shape requirements, but Class I bananas can have “slight defects of shape,” and Class II bananas can have full-on “defects of shape.” The minimum size is 14 centimetres long and 2.7 centimetres thick — roughly the dimensions of, well, a banana.
The regulation never defined what “abnormal curvature” actually meant, which was the whole problem. Both Europhiles and Euroskeptics seized on it — one side calling it an apocryphal myth, the other an example of needless bureaucracy. Both were partially right. The Economist later documented “decades of flat-out lies about EU regulations” in British tabloids, noting that the EU’s tepid fact-checking operation attracted about 1,000 visitors per article while the lies reached millions.
In 2008, the European Commission voted to repeal regulations on fruit and vegetable shapes. The Agriculture Commissioner explained: “In this era of high prices and growing demand, it makes no sense to throw these products away or destroy them. It shouldn’t be the EU’s job to regulate these things.”
That banana bendy law...
#JustLookAtIt
I think there are treatments for abnormal curvature. Check with an urologist.