Paulina Brandberg has mentioned that she is receiving “skilled assist” for her bananaphobia
Swedish Gender Equality Minister Paulina Brandberg has such an acute phobia of bananas that her employees should work across the clock to make sure that she by no means has to put eyes on the yellow fruit, Swedish newspaper Expressen has reported.
In a social media submit in 2020, Brandberg admitted that she has “the world’s weirdest phobia of bananas.” Her admission was dismissed as an exaggeration till Wednesday, when Expressen printed leaked authorities emails revealing the true extent of her concern.
Earlier than Brandberg attended a lunch on the Norwegian Judicial Company in February, her cupboard secretary emailed the company: “Paulina Brandberg has a robust allergy to bananas, so it could be appreciated that there are not any bananas within the areas the place she will probably be staying.”
Forward of a gathering with an area authority later that month, Brandberg’s secretary was extra blunt, telling municipal employees: “no bananas are allowed on the premises both.”
When the speaker of Sweden’s parliament, Andreas Norlen, invited Brandberg for espresso in September, he too obtained an electronic mail informing him of the minister’s banana “allergy.”
“Thanks, there’ll most likely be a cake with the espresso and we’ll make sure that it doesn’t include banana,” Norlen’s workplace replied. “Nonetheless, we’ve fruit baskets with bananas in adjoining areas and passage rooms. Is it sufficient if we put these away within the morning of the identical day?”
“Will probably be sensible if you happen to can put them away within the morning of the identical day,” Brandberg’s secretary responded.
Whereas her secretary describes the phobia as an allergy, Brandberg advised Expressen that “it’s one thing that I get skilled assist with.”
“It’s like a type of allergy, you might say,” she advised the newspaper.
Bananaphobia will not be acknowledged by most medical scientists as a professional situation, and is lumped in with the generic phobia of “sure meals” within the Worldwide Classification of Illnesses. Nonetheless, anecdotal proof means that it’s a actual, if uncommon, phenomenon. On the web site of Thoughts, a British psychological well being charity, one bananaphobia sufferer described how “seeing a banana in actual life makes me extraordinarily anxious, I hyperventilate and really feel petrified.”
“I do know bananas can’t harm me however for some purpose I’m filled with concern at any time when I see or scent them,” she wrote.
Following the publication of Expressen’s article, Brandberg’s fellow MP Teresa Carvalho additionally got here out as a bananaphobe. “I undergo from the identical ailment,” the Social Democrat wrote on X. “We might have had many robust debates about situations in working life, however on this challenge we stand united in opposition to a typical enemy.”
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