“It’s early afternoon and I’m a bit peckish,” said Dr Mosley on his podcast Just One Thing. “So, I’m about to grab a delicious snack that could improve my blood flow, boost my brain and trim my waistline.” On top of all of these benefits, this small food was also found to cut the risk of dying by 35 percent.
Dr Mosley continued: “It’s not some exotic superfood. In fact, it’s an apple.”
One of the best known snacks when it comes to health, apples have been celebrated for its powerful benefits for ages, landing the famous saying – an apple a day keeps the doctor away.
The podcaster said: “One reason this fruit is so good for us is that the skin is packed with compounds called flavonoids.
“Eating an apple a day has been shown to improve blood pressure, help people lose weight and has even been linked to a longer life.”
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Brimming with fibre and vitamins, apple’s skin is packed with the “good stuff”.
But the most important part are the flavonoids, as the doctor mentioned.
Dr Mosley said: “Flavonoids are antioxidants found in apple skins and they’ve been shown to have a host of benefits.
“A recent trial in Western Australia showed that eating apples with the skin on helped reduce blood pressure and improve heart health.”
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All of these properties make the snack a great choice for boosting your longevity as cancer alone claims more than 160,000 lives annually in the UK.
To get to the core of the research, the Just One Thing host invited Dr Catherine Bondonno, Research Fellow at the Institute of Nutrition Research at Edith Cowan University in Western Australia.
The researcher found that eating an apple a day cut the risk of dying by 35 percent.
Looking at over 1,400 healthy women over the age of 70, the study also noticed that even a half an apple a day reduced the risk by 20 percent.
As Dr Mosley explained, the key part of apples are their flavonoid-rich skins.
The benefits linked to these plant goodies are plentiful, with research highlighting their effects on longevity.
Dr Bondonno said: “We followed 56,000 people for 23 years and we saw that a 500 milligram flavonoid intake was associated with a lower risk of all cause cardiovascular and cancer mortality.”
So, whether you want to reduce your risk of dying, cut your blood pressure and cholesterol, or lower inflammation, apples could be “just one thing” to try.
Source: Daily Express
