. How can the potassium in bananas not kill us as it’s one of most reactive elements in the periodic table?
In: Chemistry
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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