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The Greatest Thing
About Apples
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For a quick and healthy snack, you can’t go wrong grabbing one of this season’s freshest apples. But put the peeler away. Because if you pitch the
skin, you’re ditching some pretty great things -- like cancer-fighting compounds called triterpenoids. What are those, you ask?
Gotta Get Your Triters
Triterpenoids are powerful compounds that have shown strong anticancer potential against breast, liver, and colon cancer. And Red Delicious apples
have triters in their peels. The peels also possess most of the apple’s fiber and cell-protective quercetin. So grab one, wash it well, and eat it whole.
Finish up those autumn apples. They're good for your brain. Apples are high in quercetin, a compound with antioxidant properties that may
decrease the risk of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer's by protecting brain cell membranes. Quercetin has an even higher antioxidant
capacity than vitamin C, studies suggest. Other ways to get your fill: tea, onions, and cranberries.
Quercetin is a member of the flavonoid family found in apples, onions, tea, cranberries, blueberries, broccoli, cherries, cocoa, grapes, apricots, red
wine, and kale. Quercetin may be one of the reasons why eating an apple a day is so good for you. High intake of quercetin may reduce your risk of lung
cancer, asthma, respiratory conditions, heart attack, and cataracts, and new research suggests it may protect against Alzheimer's disease, too.
Remember, however, that no one food or supplement can offer complete protection against any condition, so eat a balanced, varied diet to maximize
your nutrition intake. In addition to eating a diverse, healthful diet, other ways to preserve your cognitive function include exercise, mental stimulation,
social interaction, and regular check-ups and health screenings, all of which affect disease risk.
How Do You Like Them Apples?
We already love apples for their low-calorie, high-fiber, healthy snack appeal. But there are a million more reasons to munch on them. Here are just
a few:
Better breathing. Just a couple of apples a week will do the trick.
Weight loss: Trying to lose a few pounds? Eating a bit of high-fiber fruit like a small apple or pear -- before each meal is a proven weight-loss booster.
You've seen those ads for weight-loss pills that promise to help you lose even more weight when you diet. It's possible that apple wedges could give
those pills a run for the money. In a recent study where women were divided up into fruit-before-meals and no-fruit-before-meals groups, the fruit group
lost more weight -- even though they all followed the same reduced-calorie diet. The key? Choosing fruit that's high in fiber but low in calories (read: high
water content, like apples
Healthier colon. If you had to choose one fruit to keep your colon happy, the one to pick would be an apple. The kind of fiber in apples -- called pectin --
appears to both bump up colon-protective compounds and clamp down on cancer-causing ones.
The Power of Pectin
In a lab study, apple pectin increased levels of butyrate, a fatty acid that not only keeps colon tissue healthy but also slows the production of a cancer-
causing substance. Apple juice extracts amped up butyrate as well.
SOOOOOOO…eat your apples – every day. Remember… “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Maybe there is something to those old wives tales!!
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