Cooking bananas (matooke) are a main staple in central Uganda and are very important to well-being and health. Recently, matooke have also been associated with micronutrient deficiencies among children and women. For a number of years, this fruit has been at the heart of a public health strategy that seeks to create ‘better bananas’, that is, biofortified or nutritionally enriched bananas. The efforts to biofortify food crops are part of a recent trend in the nutrition world towards improving the quality and not only the quantity of food. This article unpacks recent configurations of philanthropy, plant science and global public health and the ways in which they make conventional food crops thinkable, for instance, as cost-effective medicines. This emergent and economized form of valuing bananas is in tension with how Ugandans appreciate bananas in everyday life. I show that emerging valuations of food matter but still should not be mistaken for changes on the ground. This article thereby searches for a middle ground between critiques of global public health and everyday practice in Uganda as well as between praxeological and structuralist/culturalist approaches to food. Instead of dismissing this banana as part of a mere paternalistic project, I show that it also is ‘good’ conceptually in that it makes bananas and health thinkable in new ways.

烹饪香蕉（木瓜）是乌干达中部地区的主要主食，对人们的福祉和健康非常重要。最近，matooke儿童和妇女的微量营养素缺乏症也与之有关。多年来，这种水果一直是旨在创建“更好的香蕉”（即生物强化或营养丰富的香蕉）的公共卫生策略的核心。生物强化粮食作物的努力是营养界最近一个趋势的一部分，该趋势不仅要提高食品质量，而且要提高食品的质量。本文介绍了慈善事业，植物科学和全球公共卫生的最新结构，以及它们如何使常规粮食作物成为可想而知的方法，例如，作为具有成本效益的药物。这种新兴而经济的估价香蕉的形式与乌干达人在日常生活中如何欣赏香蕉有关。我表明，食品价值的新出现，但仍不应误认为是实地的变化。因此，本文寻求在对全球公共卫生的批评与乌干达的日常实践之间，以及在人类行为学和结构主义/文化主义的饮食方法之间找到一个中间立场。我并没有把香蕉当作家长式项目的一部分来抛弃，而是表明它在概念上也是“好”的，因为它使香蕉和健康以新的方式来考虑。