Garnier Banana Hair Food Review: One Tub, Three Jobs and a Missing Seal
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There is no seal under the lid of Garnier's Banana Hair Food, and six of its last 100 reviewers complained about the state their tub arrived in, several convinced they had been sent a used one. The cream inside tells a much happier story.
Unscrew the lid on a brand new tub of Garnier's Banana Hair Food and you will find nothing between you and the cream. No foil, no protective film, nothing. That one packaging decision sits behind a surprising share of this product's angriest recent feedback, and it is worth understanding before you order, because the mask itself is having a very good run. The listing holds 4.6 stars across 20,029 ratings, and the 100 most recent UK reviews average 4.47, with 75 of them awarding the full five stars. We read all 100, separated the raves from the returns, and worked out what this 400ml tub does well, who it suits, and why a handful of buyers were convinced they had been sent someone else's part-used mask. They probably had not, and one sharp-eyed reviewer worked out exactly what was going on.
The Seal That Was Never There
Start with the complaint cluster, because it is the strangest one. 6 of the 100 most recent reviews are about the condition the tub arrived in rather than the product itself. CristinaVM left one star and wrote, "Container was open and it looked like was used already." Salman posted the same suspicion, asking whether the tub is supposed to arrive unsealed. Another buyer's tub turned up split open with cream through the packaging, Rodders received one that looked opened, used and sent out again, a fourth reviewer reported the same, and tessa's first tub arrived with some product missing, though she noted Amazon refunded it quickly.
Then J&N, a three-star reviewer, did the digging the rest of us would skip. After seeing the used-tub reviews, they researched the packaging before ordering: "These pots are not sealed - there is no protective film," adding, "So don’t expect a sealed pot!!!" That matches what the remaining complaints describe. A tub with no factory seal that has been rattling through a courier network can absolutely arrive with cream on the underside of the lid and a swirl that no longer looks showroom-fresh.
None of this tells you the mask is bad, and a real short-fill or a damaged pot is refundable in a couple of taps. But it is the single most avoidable source of one-star reviews here, and Garnier could end it with a film seal tomorrow. Until then, know what to expect when the lid comes off, and judge the contents on what they do to your hair rather than how the surface looks on arrival.
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Conditioner, Three-Minute Mask or Leave-In: How Buyers Split
Garnier's usage panel on the listing sets out three routes for the same tub. Use it as an instant treatment on wet hair and rinse straight off, leave it for three minutes on wet hair as an intense treatment, or smooth a small amount through the lengths and tips of wet or dry hair as a leave-in. One tub replacing three products is the whole pitch, and buyers have taken it literally: 11 of the 100 most recent reviews describe using it as a leave-in, alongside the majority who treat it as a conditioner or rinse-out mask.
Mae went in sceptical and came out converted: "I thought it was ambitious advertising claims. But this works as everything." Her household mostly uses it as a leave-in. Kellie, mid-way through lifting dark hair to blonde, pushes the timings much further than the label suggests: "I put in dry hair and leave on over night wash off with shampoo in the morning," crediting it with stopping her bleached hair drying out between salon appointments. LadyLikesShopping28 sits between the two camps, leaving it on for 30 minutes under a hot towel after showering and reporting body, volume and no stray dry ends on fine, stressed hair.
One nuance from the small print is worth knowing. The headline "up to 7x smoother" figure comes from an instrumental test after the mask was applied as a rinse-off, so the boldest claim on the tub belongs to the rinse-out method, not the leave-in. Josie's experience lines up with that: she found results noticeably better when she rinsed it out in the shower than when she left it in. Whichever method you settle on, the 400ml tub stretches. Lianna has used it for a year and rarely needs to rebuy because a small amount covers her shorter hair each wash, and several other reviewers make the same point about how slowly the tub empties.
Garnier Hair Food Multi-use 3-in-1 Hair Treatment Mask, Banana, 400ml
A conditioner, three-minute mask and leave-in in one 400ml vegan tub, backed by 75 five-star reviews in the last hundred.
38 Mentions of the Smell, and Not All Are Compliments
The scent is this product's loudest feature. 38 of the 100 most recent reviews mention the smell, and the overwhelming majority are fans, describing it as lush, incredible and reason enough to repurchase. Softness gets almost as much airtime, with 26 reviews using the word soft to describe the results, typically paired with shine and easier detangling. Marcin's five-star summary is typical of the middle of this review set: a nice texture that spreads easily, hair left smooth and manageable, and consistent results with regular use.
The dissenters are worth hearing though, because banana is not a neutral fragrance choice. Ruby, three stars, is the funniest of them: "Great product but absolutely stinks! Your hair will smell of banananas even after drying!" She confirmed it hydrates dry hair regardless, which makes hers the fairest summary of the trade-off: the performance and the perfume are separate questions. Todd Gauthier gave five stars with the shortest warning in the set: "Smells yummy tastes like crap." We are confident Garnier never intended anyone to find that out.
Oddly, CristinaVM, the reviewer with the suspect open tub, reported the opposite scent problem: hers did not smell of banana at all, on her hair or in the pot. Taken together, the sensible expectation is a noticeable sweet banana fragrance that outlasts rinsing, which most buyers treat as a perk. If food-scented haircare makes you wince, one of the other blends in this range, or a different mask entirely, will suit you better than fighting the tropical smoothie cloud.
Chemo Regrowth, Bleach Damage and the Curly Contingent
The most compelling reviews in this set come from buyers whose hair had been through something. Julie, whose review 12 people marked helpful, bought her second tub while managing regrowth after chemotherapy 18 months earlier, along with the dry, sensitive scalp and flaking that came with it: "This not only does not irritate my scalp it actually seems to help calm it and reduces the flaking." Debbie McCarthy tells a similar recovery story, buying it after illness left her fine, coloured hair in poor condition, noticing improvement from the first use and calling her hair the best it has been in years. Gina stripped her hair colour out and described hair that felt like straw softening after a few minutes with the mask.
Curly and wavy hair owners are a small but distinct voice, with 7 of the 100 reviews mentioning curls. Anisha has tried a run of curl creams and conditioners and rates this "the best one by far," saying it keeps her curls refreshed and defined when used as a conditioner. Nine reviews mention buying it for daughters, several with curly or easily tangled hair, and detangling comes up repeatedly as the reason it sticks in the family bathroom.
One useful sceptic to weigh: BMlalazi uses it on her daughter's curly hair, likes it, but finds another tub in Garnier's own range moisturises better and defines curls more, so she buys whichever is on offer. For tight curls needing maximum moisture, this seems to be a good option rather than the definitive one.
The Seven Who Saw No Magic
Performance complaints are the largest failure cluster in the recent reviews, and it is a modest one: 7 of the 100 most recent reviews report the mask doing nothing, or actively working against their hair. caroline, two stars, came in from TikTok with high hopes: "it did absolutely nothing for my hair as a mask." Ramee found it made silky hair drier rather than softer, and Tetiana's one-star review is two words long: it dries hair. Daiva had the opposite failure, two stars: "after using this product my hair looks like wasn't washed for long time, greasy and stuck together." caitlin found it unremarkable next to the honey Garnier leave-in she prefers, and Daniel liked it well enough for curly hair but questioned the value.
The seventh complaint is the most interesting. A.S, a long-time buyer with fine, blonde-highlighted hair, reports the product changed: "It’s always a shame when companies mess with a successful formula." That is not a stray theory. The listing's own artwork flags a new formula, reformulated with vitamins C, E and F, so anyone who loved a tub from a few years ago is buying a revised recipe today. For most of the recent hundred that revision is clearly landing well, but if the old version was your staple, A.S's experience says test a single tub before stocking up.
Seven disappointed buyers against 86 who scored it four or five stars is a strong ratio for a mass-market mask. The pattern in the failures skews toward fine or already-silky hair types, where rich masks are always a gamble.
The Final Tally
The scoreboard, counted by us from the 100 most recent UK reviews: 75 five-star, 11 four-star, 6 three-star, 2 two-star and 6 one-star, for a 4.47 average against the listing's lifetime 4.6 from 20,029 ratings. That small slip is real but easily explained: five of the six recent one-star reviews are about unsealed or damaged tubs on arrival, not the mask. The two failure clusters, 7 performance complaints and 6 arrival-condition complaints, are both far below anything that would flip our verdict. One disclosure: this listing covers seven Hair Food blends, and a few reviewers compare across them, so where a quote is variant-specific we have said so.
Our score is 4.4 out of 5. What holds it back from higher is the missing seal, which Garnier could fix in a week and which keeps generating avoidable refunds, plus the small band of fine-haired buyers who found it flat or greasy. What pushes it up is everything else: a 400ml tub of vegan, silicone-free cream with 97% natural origin ingredients and Cruelty Free International approval, that credibly does three jobs, smells like pudding, and has post-chemo, post-bleach and curly-haired reviewers repurchasing it.
If your hair is dry, damaged, coloured or curly, this is about as safe as a budget haircare bet gets, and value comes up constantly in the feedback: 28 of the 100 most recent reviews mention price or value for money, almost all approvingly. Fine, easily weighed-down hair should start with the rinse-out method and go sparingly. Just do not panic when the lid comes off and there is no seal underneath. Now you know.
Garnier Hair Food Multi-use 3-in-1 Hair Treatment Mask, Banana, 400ml
A conditioner, three-minute mask and leave-in in one 400ml vegan tub, backed by 75 five-star reviews in the last hundred.