Politician’s crippling fear of bananas means she can’t be in a room with one
A Swedish government minister has insisted that she can’t be in the same room as a banana because she has a phobia of them.
While bananaphobia is rare, it is a valid phobia and causes serious symptoms like nausea and anxiety.
According to newspaper Expressen, the country’s gender equality minister, Paulina Brandberg, insisted that staff clear rooms of any bananas before she enters to help with her phobia.
A leaked message ahead of a VIP dinner she went to read that she ‘has a strong allergy to bananas, so it would be appreciated that there are no bananas in the areas where she will be staying’.
The full email sent out from her cabinet secretary read: ‘Paulina Brandberg has a strong allergy to bananas, so it would be appreciated that there are no bananas in the spaces where she will be staying.’
The minister got her wish because the response back read as follows: ‘We must secure the conference so that there are no bananas.’
A later email from her employees to the County Administrative Board was a bit more direct and read: ‘No bananas are allowed on the premises either.’
In other meetings she has had for example with Speaker Andreas Norlén, he was also told all bananas should be removed because of her ‘allergy’.
It is also believed that the Ministry of Labour has insisted in the past that rooms should be cleared of the fruit because Brandberg has a ‘strong allergy’.
Brandberg has admitted to the newspaper that she is getting professional help for the phobia.
She has written openly before about the rare phobia in the past.
In 2020, in a now deleted post on what was known as Twitter (now X) she posted that she has ‘the world’s weirdest phobia of bananas’.
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