Janet Young, age 13, of Austin, Tex., for her question:

IS THE BANANA RICH IN NOURISHMENT?

Nutritionists rate the banana high in food value. A ripe banana is about 22 percent carbohydrate which makes it a good source of energy. The fruit also contains three very valuable vitamins: A, B, and C.

Banana flour is just coming into wide use. It is made by grinding the dried unripened fruit. Experts estimate that a given amount of banana flour is as nourishing as twice as much wheat flour. Doctors also find it especially valuable as a food for babies.

The banana is one of the few fruits which can be bought fresh and in good condition at all times of the year. Its peeling is germproof and dirt proof. Not too many fruits can make that statement.

Raw bananas are at their best when the skins have turned yellowish brown. The flesh of the fruit is then fully ripe and contains natural sugar. Unripe bananas contain less sugar and more starch than the ripe ones. Also, unripe bananas are as hard to digest as raw potatoes.

When the fruit is to be shipped for considerable distances, workers pick it green, a whole bunch at a time, and allow it to ripen on the way to market. They sometimes place it in warm storage houses for ripening. The United States alone imports more than 3.5 billion pounds of bananas each year.

Water makes up about 75.7 percent of a banana, while there is about 1.1 percent protein and only 0.2 percent fat.

The bananas most commonly used as fruit in America are large, yellow and smooth skinned. They are known as Gros Michel or Martinique bananas. A smaller, red skinned variety is the Red Jamaica or Baracoa. The plantain is a very large banana which is hard and floury. People nearly always eat it as a cooked vegetable. It forms a part of many popular dishes in Latin America.

Bananas grow best in a hot, damp climate. They are raised for foods in the tropics of both the Eastern and the Western hemispheres. Asia was their original home, but they have been planted on many other warm parts of the world.

The Hawaiian Islands produce a banana crop. In the continental United States, Florida grows small quantities of bananas. Some are also grown along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

But the most important banana producing region in the world is Latin America. Brazil is the world's leading banana growing country.

The 10 leading banana growing countries of the world, listed in their order of importance, are Brazil, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Honduras, Burundi, Costa Rica, Thailand, The Philippines and Mexico.

Fruit grows on banana plants which grow from 10 to 25 feet tall and look like trees. But a banana plant is not a tree, because it has no woody trunk or boughs. It has what looks like a trunk, which is sometimes as much as one foot thick at the bottom. This is made up of long leafstalks of the plant which are wrapped tightly together in a long, still bundle.