Do you know that today is Eat A Red Apple Day? Yep, it is celebrated on December 1st of every year.It's just one of those made-up food holidays but there are a lot of good reasons why we should participate in this special day. And if you remember, there's a saying that goes, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. It is true because apples are nutritious. Not just any apple, though.
A group of Canadian researchers studied eight popular varieties of apple grown on the same farm under similar conditions. Their findings show that Red Delicious Apples, along with Northern Spy and Ida Red, might do a better job at keeping the doctor away because of the greater amount of disease-fighting antioxidants it contains.
They also found that polyphenols, a type of antioxidant that protect cells and body chemicals against damage caused by free radicals, reactive atoms that contribute to tissue damage in the body, are five times more prevalent in the skin than the flesh of the apples.
Here's the nutritional information of red delicious apple.
Furthermore, researchers at Cornell University in New York offer more reasons why you should include apple in your diet.
A study published in the December 1, 2004 issue of the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry say that quercetin, another powerful antioxidant abundant in apples, appears to protect brain cells against oxidative stress in rats. It is the same tissue-damaging process associated with Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders.
In March, findings presented at the ACS national meeting in San Diego say that antioxidants found in apple extracts have the potential to lower bad cholesterol (LDL) by stimulating the production of LDL receptors in the liver, which help remove cholesterol from the blood.
A study published in the April 6, 2005 issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry show that rats exposed to a known carcinogen and then fed the human equivalent of one, three or six apples a day respectively over 24 weeks were up to 44% less likely to develop breast tumors.
Fresh Red Delicious Apples are available from Washington around this time, but cold storage product is available the rest of the year, so you can have them all year round. They're excellent for eating fresh or in salads. However, they are not recommended for baking. If you don't want to eat them, then drink them! They're succulent and sweet making them an awesome juicing apple.
Image by little blue hen on Flickr.Some Rights Reserved
