The writer wants to add a sentence before sentence 1 to introduce the main topic of the passage. Which of the following choices best accomplishes this goal?

a. Bananas have come a long way from being a luxury food in the early twentieth century to being one of the most widely available fruits today.
b. The popular Cavendish banana requires a great deal of fertilizer and water as well as pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides to grow.
c. The Cavendish banana, the most widely available type of banana in the world, is prized by consumers and producers in part because of its predictability.
d. The popularity of bananas today can be traced back to an advertising campaign in the 1960s that focused on the uniform, blemish-free appearance of Chiquita-brand bananas.
e. Americans eat an average of 28.5 pounds of bananas per person every year, making bananas the most popular fruit in the United States.