An Apple a Day…New Study Reveals Truth Behind that Age-Old Phrase
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Being a health-conscious consumer, you likely already know that peeling the skin off chicken and turkey—whether it’s before or after cooking—will save you from consuming the empty calories, and heart-clogging saturated fat that accompany our fine feathered friends. But when it comes to fruits and vegetables, skin is “in!” |
Fiber in fruits and vegetables—the stuff that keeps you “regular” and helps prevent various types of cancers and diabetes—comes primarily from the skin. For instance, in potatoes, you get about two grams of fiber from a medium sized potato without the skin. But if you eat the entire potato, you get about four grams of fiber. The same is true for an apple. Without the skin, you get about one and a half grams of fiber. But with the skin, you get about three and a half grams of fiber.
If fiber content were the only good thing that came with eating the skin off an apple, that’d be enough. There’s more, though—much more! According to a new study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, apple skins contain chemical compounds that can actually help prevent cancer!
Researchers from Cornell University came to this conclusion after gathering 230 apples (Man, that’s a lot of apples) and extracted each and every compound out of the apple skins to see what impact they had on various kinds of cancer cells. They identified 12 compounds called “triterpenoids.” These fun-to-say compounds, the researchers found, actually prevented the growth of cancer cells that the researchers had cultured from previous studies.
“[Eating] five to twelve servings of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables daily is appropriate to reduce the risks of chronic diseases, including cancers, and to meet nutrient requirements for optimum health,” said Rui Hai Liu, one of the study’s researchers and an associate professor of food science at Cornell University.
Professor Liu restates what most of us already know—that eating several servings of fruits and vegetables daily is as essential to our long term health as regular exercise is, if not more so. But this finding is particularly exciting for the apple lovers among us and gives new life to the age-old phrase of “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
Here are some other exciting healthful tidbits about apples and their contribution to our health:
- Cloudy apple juice (as opposed to the more common clear kind) is among the healthiest juices you can drink in terms of polyphenol, flavonoid and antioxidant content
- Studies indicate that the phenols in apple skins are a natural sunscreen, blocking out UV-B rays the sun emits (Braeburns and Granny Smith apples are the most protective)
- Studies indicate that the nutritional content of apples were the most beneficial in preventing various diseases and health conditions (i.e. cancer, asthma, type-2 diabetes) when compared to other fruits and vegetables
And that’s just the beginning. So, if you were ever in doubt about the health benefits of apples in comparison to other fruits and vegetables, doubt no longer. All hail the mighty apple!
Related Posts
- “Cloudy” Apple Juice Contains Higher Level of Antioxidant Activity Than “Clear” Juice
- A High Fiber Diet Can Slash the Risk of Breast Cancer, Study Finds
- Food Combining Offers Miraculous Health Benefits, Research Reveals
- Watercress Shown to Destroy Cancer Cells, Study Indicates
- Study Shows Flavanoids In Black Raspberries Wipe Out Leukemia Cancer Cells
 
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Posted: January 16th, 2008 under Apples, Cancer.
