View source for Banania

{{Short description|Chocolate drink}}

'''Banania''' is a popular [[chocolate]] drink found most widely distributed in [[France]]. It is made from [[Cocoa solids|cocoa]], [[banana flour]], [[cereals]], [[honey]] and [[sugar]]. There are two types of Banania available in French supermarkets: 'traditional' which must be cooked with milk for 10 minutes, and 'instant' which can be prepared in similar fashion to [[Nesquik]].

==History==
[[Image:Giacomo de Andreis, affiche publicitaire de la marque Banania, 1915.jpg|left|thumb|The logo used by the original company in 1915]]

At the outset of [[World War I]], the popularity of the colonial troops at the time led to the replacement of the West Indian in 1915, by the now more familiar jolly [[Senegalese Tirailleurs|Senegalese infantry man]] enjoying Banania.<ref name="Berliner">Brett A. Berliner.  ''Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black in Jazz-Age France'' Pages 10–17. ([[University of Massachusetts Press]], 2002) {{ISBN|1-55849-356-5}}</ref> Pierre Lardet took it upon himself to distribute the product to the Army, using the line ''pour nos soldats la nourriture abondante qui se conserve sous le moindre volume possible'' ("for our soldiers: abundant nourishment that stores while taking up the least space possible").{{Citation needed|date=October 2007}}

The brand's yellow background underlines the banana ingredient, and the Senegalese infantryman's red and blue uniform make up the other two main colours. The slogan ''Y'a bon'' ("It's good") derives from the [[pidgin]] French supposedly used by these soldiers (it is, in fact, an invention).<ref name="Berliner" />

The form of the character has since evolved to more of a cartoon character. However, the original advertising has become a cultural icon in France. Posters and reproduction tin-plate signs of the pre-war advertising continue to be sold.{{Citation needed|date=October 2017}}

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Banania sponsored the [[Yellow Jersey]] of the [[Tour de France]]. In France the Banania brand is now owned by the newly founded French company [[Nutrial]], which acquired it from [[Unilever]] in 2003.{{Citation needed|date=October 2017}}

Since the 1970s, the slogan « Y'a bon » has been increasingly criticized as carrying the racist stereotypes that fueled the caricature of the Black man of the time (silly smile, friend of children, therefore a big child and incapable of expressing himself correctly in the French language that he must use) and as a potential symbol of colonialism (just like its mascot "L'ami Y'a bon").<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.grioo.com/article-disc.php?aid=3897&page=3 |title=Y'a bon banania, le retour! |work=Grioo |date=23 January 2005 |access-date=16 August 2025}}</ref>

On May 19, 2011, the Movement Against Racism and for Friendship Between Peoples (MRAP) obtained before the Versailles Court of Appeal that Nutrimaine, the company that owns the Banania trademark, stop the sale of products bearing the slogan "Y'a bon." In its ruling, the court ruled that Nutrimaine must remove "in whatever form and by whatever means, the manufacturing and marketing of any illustration on which the famous phrase appears." She imposed a penalty of 20,000 euros per day for each violation found.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.lexpress.fr/styles/plaisirs/saveurs/y-a-bon-banania-disparaitra-bel-et-bien_994798.html?cmp_redirect=true |title="Y'a bon Banania" will indeed disappear |work=Associated Press |date=20 May 2025 |access-date=20 May 2025}}</ref>

== Marketing ==
This brand of chocolate drink is recognized by its trademark the 'bonhomme Banania': a black man wearing a fez.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Af9rpn_6IzoC&q=Banania+the+brand&pg=PA147|title=Antique Trader Guide to Fakes & Reproductions|last=Chervenka|first=Mark|date=2003|publisher=Krause Publications|isbn=087349590X|language=en}}</ref>  The company started using this illustration in 1915.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cYjkKhvSx9QC&q=Banania&pg=PA63|title=Racist Trademarks: Slavery, Orient, Colonialism and Commodity Culture|last=Hinrichsen|first=Malte|date=2012|publisher=LIT Verlag Münster|isbn=9783643902856|language=en}}</ref>

==Controversy==

Some feel that the advertising slogans and images are [[Racism|racist]] and [[Colonialism|colonialist]] as it reinforces the cliché of a friendly yet stupid African.<ref name="Berliner" /> Some French black people connect this stereotype with aggressive colonialist policy in Africa of the global group [[Unilever]], the former owner of the brand. The Martiniquan psychiatrist and philosopher [[Frantz Fanon]], in his 1952 book ''[[Black Skin, White Masks]]'', mentions the grinning [[Senegalese Tirailleurs|Senegalese tirailleur]] as an example of how in a burgeoning consumer culture, the black subject appears not only as an object, but as "an object in the midst of other objects".<ref name="Fanon">Frantz Fanon.  ''Black Skin, White Masks'', trans. Charles Lam Marckmann Page 109. ([[Pluto Press]], 1986)</ref>

==See also==
*[[Aunt Jemima]]
*[[Uncle Ben's]]
* [[List of chocolate beverages]]
* {{portal-inline|Drink}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.ina.fr/pub/alimentation-boisson/video/PUB3212122043/banania-petit-dejeuner-chocolate.fr.html Banania commercial (in French)]

{{Banana}}
{{Chocolate beverages}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Drink brands]]
[[Category:French brands]]
[[Category:French drinks]]
[[Category:Chocolate drinks]]