Why does an apple a day keeps the doctor away?
You may have heard this saying over and over throughout multiple mediums, in newspapers, quoted by health shows, health industry professionals, direct sales but have you ever wondered where this came from and why it may be true?
Apples contain very little vitamins and minerals relative to their size, they contain nothing extraordinary in calories (roughly 70-100 per serving) nor do they have any special chemical compounds that ward off disease. What makes them so special is their very high FIBER content.
This aphorism probably originated in somewhere in Europe where farmers had a diet very high in apples (thus high fiber). Although “fiber” wasn’t known back then, the effects where, they had very few insidences of hemorrhoids, gallstones, diabetes, obesity and diverticular diseases relative to the city populations.
As diets during the industrial revolution changed from whole foods to refined foods high in fat, salt and low fiber… insidences of disease increased while the rural population stayed the same.
So an “apple a day keeps the doctor away” can be summarized in modern terms as “a diet high in fiber keeps disease at bay”.
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