"Banana skins have been trendy among vegans since at least 2019, when online recipes began circulating for treating the peels like bacon."

"At around the same time, the pulled not-pork had its first brush with internet fame, courtesy of the Canadian blogger Melissa Copeland, who published an explainer — and recipe — on her site the Stingy Vegan along with a video on Facebook. She’d developed it after learning that vegans in Venezuela use bananas’ outer jackets for an alternative to carne mechada (shredded beef), and in Brazil a similar swap is popular in a dish known as carne louca (or 'crazy meat')." 

 From "Think Outside the Banana. Eat the Peel. After the British chefs Nadiya Hussain and Nigella Lawson developed recipes using banana skins, the British cooking public is perplexed" (NYT). 

Speaking of crazy, the NYT article fails to mention that commercially grown bananas have a lot of pesticide in the peels. When I've seen discussions of eating banana peels elsewhere, there's always been a prominent warning that you've got to use organically grown bananas. 

There's very little reason to eat banana peels (unless you're desperately starving). A caption there says banana peels are "[c]onsidered useless scraps by many home cooks," but many other home cooks know that they're great for composting... and growing some vegetables that are genuinely tasty. 

What's the point of eating the skins? That they're "trendy"?! If that's your reason, you're a mark. Good luck! There's also the idea that you should make a fetish out of not wasting anything. One of the "cooks" discussed in the article is said to be "an expert on no-waste cuisine," but what her expertise has led her to, when it comes to banana peels, is puréeing them and sneaking the resulting goo into cake batter and smoothies.

Is there a flavor contribution of any significance?

In truth, the flavor of the cooked skins isn’t too pronounced — it’s subtle, with a polite suggestion of bitterness, and a slight floral note on the finish.

The answer to my question is, apparently, no, but points to the NYT author for coming up with "a polite suggestion of bitterness." That's funny, and I get the point, which I take it is: Don't eat banana peels.