Leaked Emails Show Swedish Minister’s Unique Fear of Bananas

Fear is an elemental part of the human condition. Everybody is afraid of something. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. Everybody…except for Chuck Norris, who is less a flesh-and-blood mortal and more a crime-fighting demigod in human form. Chuck Norris was sent to the corporeal realm for the express purpose of reaping vengeance upon the sinful and the wicked and so, if there is one thing that you should be afraid of, it’s probably Chuck Norris. Anyway, my overall point is that people are afraid of things, and one of the weirder things that people are afraid of is bananas.

Fresh proof of this was provided by Politico this week, which reported on a batch of leaked emails showing a European bureaucrat’s efforts to rid her professional spaces of the dreaded yellow fruit. According to the leaked emails, the government offices where Swedish Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg appears must be banana-free, so as to accommodate her unusual phobia.

The emails are from Brandberg’s team to several different public agencies, in preparation for various meetings.

“Paulina Brandberg has a strong allergy to bananas, so it would be appreciated that there are no bananas in the areas where she will be staying,” one of the emails, which was sent to the Norwegian Judicial Agency prior to a scheduled meeting, stated. Other emails were addressed to a country administrative board (her team asked that “no bananas are allowed on the premises”) and even to Swedish Parliament Speaker Andreas Norlén (officials again asked that “no traces of bananas” appear during another meeting with Brandberg).

It appears that Brandberg is not literally allergic to the fruit, however. “It’s sort of an allergy, you could say,” Brandberg told Swedish tabloid Expressen this week. She also noted that the banana fear is “something that” she gets “professional help with.”

Politico further notes that in a series of now-deleted posts on X, Brandberg publicly admitted to her fear of the fruit. “I have a phobia of bananas,” Brandberg wrote in 2020, apparently adding that it was the “world’s craziest phobia.”

I don’t know if it’s the bar-none craziest phobia I’ve ever heard of (some people are deathly afraid of peanut butter and some are terrified of human knees), but surely it is high on the list. Bananas aren’t frightening, they’re just gross and annoying. You have to eat them in a day or they turn the color of poop and shrivel up and melt in the midday sun. Or, you leave one in your backpack with the intention of eating it as an afternoon snack, only to forget about it and find it a week later smushed all over your laptop case.

Brandberg isn’t alone. Lots of people fear bananas. One lady has described them as “stringy, bitty, mushy frauds masquerading in yellow jackets,” the smell, sound, and appearance of which send shivers down her spine.