10/02/2026
‘The phrase ‘an apple a day keeps the doctors away’ is said to date only from 1913, but seems to have been derived from a proverb couplet recorded in 1860s Pembrokeshire, Wales:
Eat an apple on going to bed
And you’ll keep the doctor frost earning his bread.
Fresh apples, though varying from cultivar to cultivar, are a source of vitamin C, potassium salts, carotenoids and dietary fibre (Mc Whirter & Clasen
1996). The dessert apple Ribston Pippin’ contains 30 mg of vitamin C for every 100 g of flesh, and some of the cooking apples, particularly triploids such as Bramley’s Seedling’, come close to that figure. Although understood in an empirical way for at least 400 years, when the antiscorbutic factor and the chemical nature of vitamin C became scientific knowledge (Hall & Crane 1933), tables of relative nutritional values were published, often in a laudable bid to increase consumption.
Apples are also particularly rich in a class of compounds termed flavonoids. The chief effect of these compounds on human health may be to counter the disease-triggering enities called free radicals. These are destructive molecules that may be initiating factors in conditions that give rise to chronic conditions such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and asthma. Apples appear to be significant in radical-quenching compounds. Specific flavonoids in apples are catechin and quercetin, both of which appear to be potent in reducing radicals.
The anti-oxidants are highest in red-fruited cultivars such as Redlove’, which was developed in Switzerland.
Apple pectin and polyphenols are known to improve lipid metabolism and to reduce the production of pro-inflammatory molecules. Eating apples, and other ‘white fruits’, is associated with reduced risk of stroke.’
From: The Extraordinary Story Of The Apple, by Juniper and Mabberley
