Swedish Minister for Gender Equality, Paulina Brandberg, has a bizarre problem: she is afraid of… bananas, so her staff is forced to remove all these fruits from her path wherever she goes, including during official visits.
The information was revealed by the Swedish publication Expressen and picked up by Politico.
In several emails seen by Expressen, Minister Brandberg's office staff specifically request that any bananas be removed before official visits.
"Paulina Brandberg has a strong allergy to bananas, so it would be appreciated if there were no bananas in the areas where she will be accommodated," specifies one of the ministry's emails addressed to the Norwegian Judicial Agency before an official lunch.
Another email from Brandberg's team sent to a county administrative council stated that "bananas are not allowed on the premises."
In another prior warning, her staff told the Swedish Parliament Speaker, Andreas Norlén, that there should be "no traces of bananas" in the spaces where Brandberg will be during a meeting.
"It's a kind of allergy, you could say," confirmed Brandberg to Expressen, then added: "It's something for which I receive professional help."
The Minister previously wrote about her banana phobia in several posts on X, in 2020, which seem to have been deleted after the news emerged now.
"I have a banana phobia," wrote Brandberg, on September 11, 2020, while in another post on August 6, 2020, she said it is "the craziest phobia in the world."
Bananaphobia is not common at all and therefore not officially classified; but food fears are classified as specific, isolated phobias, according to the International Classification of Diseases, writes Politico.