. How can the potassium in bananas not kill us as it’s one of most reactive elements in the periodic table?
In: Chemistry
The potassium in bananas has already reacted with other things.
It’s only *reactive* until it has well…reacted with something. At which point it’s not really dangerous.
Pure Potassium being reactive means that it wants to violently bond with some other element. That’s what makes it dangerous, but the potassium in bananas is in a molecule meaning that it’s already reacted with something. That’s what makes it safe.
This is the same reason that the chlorine in tablet salt doesn’t kill you.
Fun fact, the Potassium in bananas also makes them slightly radioactive but you should keep eating them anyway. You get 10 times more radiation from sitting in front of an old school monitor than you do from a banana. It’s perfectly safe.
Because bananas are measurably radioactive physicists often joke about a BED – Banana Equivilent Dose. IE how many bananas would you have to eat to get as much radiation as a chest X-ray? 10,000
The same reason why the sodium in table salt (Na, sodium + Cl, chlorine, sodium chloride) does not explode on contact with water, or in your mouth, and the chlorine does not poison you. Both these things have properties of their own when separate, but when they undergo chemical reactions and form compounds, they gain new properties that are separate from their properties as individual elements.
The potassium (K) found in bananas exists as a compound, likely some form of a salt, such as KCl. Most of the elemental minerals that people refer to in food exist in compounds that your body breaks down in metabolic reactions. I’m not qualified to talk about any of the processes beyond that as that delves into organic/bio chemistry and nutrion, and I’m a Civil Engineer.
the potassium is reactive, but it already has reacted in the form it is present in the bananas (and any other non self combustion food).
Think about something like bread, or a cake, and what it is made of.
Flour, salt, oil/butter, eggs, baking soda, sugar etc.
Consider what each ingredient tastes like separately in comparison to that baked good. You do not taste a glob of raw egg or raw flour in it, because it has been mixed in with other ingredients and likely reacted a bit to change the raw flour or liquid egg into something a bit different. The end product when you are done cooking is a mix of ingredients that have been altered chemically and physically.
In a similar fashion, potassium does not exist in a banana as pure potassium metal. None of the elements in a banana (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, zinc, magnesium etc) exist as a pure element. While a banana does have potassium as a component, it has mixed with other elements to become more stable.
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