We’ve all heard the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but has anyone ever actually questioned what that means? It’s needless to say that we’ve been preaching time and time again that fruits and vegetables are stacked with some nutrients that we are sometimes not able to get anywhere else, but what’s so special about apples? I decided to do some exploring to see what this famous phrase was all about and if an apple a day could actually “keep the doctor away.”

Apples are good for our body, that’s a no brainer, but when looking at the nutrients that it contains it’s hard not to see why it may be one of the preferred fruits. If you go on just about any fitness website you’re sure to find a little something about the positive effects that apples have on your body, but some of the thing that I found were downright astounding. There’s of course the basic facts. For one, apples contain no cholesterol, fat and sodium, and are not harmful to our healthy in any way. Alongside this, the calorie count is incredibly low at 80. According to a specific website I looked at apples contain 22 grams of carbohydrates which equates to 7% of our recommended daily value. A lot of the carbohydrates are more specifically complex carbohydrates which are known to give a high energy boost which leaves you overall more energized. As for the various vitamins that apples alone contain, there are a number of phytonutrients in high amounts. This includes Vitamin A,E, and beta carotene. The significance of these things is that they can help prevent serious sickness such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and even asthma for those of you who suffer with that. Vitamin C is also a large component of apples which of course offers a lot of essential nutrients for those of you who know this through taking vitamin C supplements and such. This is important because it helps protect the immune system overall and can also make our bodies more resistant to a lot of other disease which “range from eye disease to cancer.” Finally, from the fitness website it gave me insight on the nutrient that apples contain which is called boron. For those of you who have taken chemistry, this may sound familiar. Boron is responsible for promoting bone strength and brain health, so clearly it has a big effect on the body.

On WebMd, I was surprisingly able to find a small test that was done in Ithaca N.Y. what seems to be in the early 2000s. This was done by researchers from Cornell’s Food Science and Toxicology Department. What they were able to find is that antioxidant properties of one apple is essentially equal to 1,500 milligrams of Vitamin C, but this was the least of their findings. Apparently the researchers, using colon cancer cells treated with apple extract, found that 50 milligrams of it from the skins of an apple decrease the cancer cell growth by 43%. Similarly, with the same amount of extract from the flesh of the apple it decreased cancer cell growth by 29%. When studying how it affected liver cancer cell growth, they found that 57% was decreased when extracted from the skin, and found a 40% decrease without the skin. Needless to say that their findings were incredible as well as completely shocking. The article finished off by saying that Charles Halsted says, that “evidence is mounting that suggests taking vitamin supplements, even in large doses, does not provide the health benefits of a healthy diet.”

So although you may have thought of the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” like I did, it seems as though apples are actually more beneficial to our health than we may have originally thought. Apples contain a lot of essential nutrients and components that we need to maintain a healthy body and immune system, therefore I think it’s safe to say that eating an apple a day wouldn’t be necessarily bad to keep ourselves healthy and energized.

http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/fact-or-fiction-an-apple-a-day-keeps-the-doctor-away.html#b

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20000621/benefits-of-eating-fruit