Happy Saturday! How's everybody doing today? Good, I presume. At any rate, I'm sure you all can recall little health tips that your parents used to say as a toddler. For example, "Drink your milk, it builds strong bones!" or perhaps "Eat your carrots! It helps w/ your eyesight." And my personal favorite: "An apple a day keeps the heart disease doctor away." The memories...(insert sigh) With that being said, have you ever wondered whether all that was true? I know I have. Hence, the reason for this post lol. Therefore, today, I'm going to examine whether or not an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Sounds good? Awesome! :-)
According to studies conducted by FSU, researchers found that by snacking on apples for 6 months, people lowered their cholesterol on average by 23%. How so? you may ask. Well, their “bad” LDL cholesterol dropped by 23% while their “good” cholesterol, which helps remover fatty deposits from blood vessels, increased by 4%.
This was indeed a pleasant surprise b/c it occurred by accident. Originally, a snack of 75 grams of dried apple was meant for a "control group" in a study on the effect of eating prunes for bone density. Instead, it was given to a randomly selected group of women. According to Dr. Bahram Arjmandi he "never expected apple consumption to reduce bad cholesterol to this extent.”
According to Dr. Arjmandi, there is no other single food that can lower LDL by such a large amount. Dried apples were used to ensure that everyone ate exactly the same amount. Dr. Arjamandi speculates that it was the apple pectin, a soluble fiber, that also caused weight loss of 3.3 lbs, or 1.49 kilograms per person, on average.
Perhaps that is the case but further studies are needed. But if you worry about cholesterol as a heart disease symptom or about stroke symptoms, eating an apple or two per day would be the equivalent of the dried fruit used in the study.
With that being said, I deem this childhood health tip a FACT. Therefore, I encourage you all to eat an apple a day b/c it indeed does keep the doctor away ;-)
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