an apple a day…
We have a confession to make. This blog post was inspired by this FABULOUS picture (of our fun and funny and clearly up-for-anything friend)! Usually it’s the other way around –we are inspired to write about something, and we take a picture to help us tell the story. But in this case, it was just the opposite - we loved the picture, we love apples – and as we started thinking about apples, we were led down a long meandering path of Greek, British, and American history.
Let’s move chronologically and start with Ancient Greece, the cradle of civilization. Helen of Troy was a figure in Greek Mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. In fact, you may have heard of Helen of Troy as the “face that launched a thousand ships.” This picture is our Helen of Troy! It’s the “picture that launched a thousand words” and inspired this blog post. But, okay, okay - enough of mythology, back to the important part of the post. An Apple a Day.
We’ve all heard the saying “An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away!” It’s likely you heard this from your grandparents, your parents, your teachers and maybe even your pediatrician. We wanted to investigate where this phrase came from and whether the claim has any merit. Because we’re fans of both history and science, we’ll break this blog post into two parts – feel free to read both, or just the parts you’re interested in:
The HISTORY:
The original proverb (first recorded in Pembrokeshire, England in 1866) was this, “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.” That saying morphed (as early as 1887) into the more modern phrasing that we use now, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” A little simpler, maybe a bit catchier. But we like the original proverb too - we might just throw it out there every now and then to impress our friends and co-workers!
The SCIENCE:
Now, for the interesting part…is this actually true? Does eating an apple a day make you healthier? Common sense tells us that eating an apple is good for you. But is there any hard science behind it? We found a few fascinating studies supporting this and we won’t list them all here, but the most notable one from 2013 compared eating apples with taking a common cholesterol-reducing drug and found that eating an apple a day was generally comparable to using a statin drug to reduce cholesterol. Their conclusion was that eating an apple a day is “able to match modern medicine and is likely to have fewer side effects.” WOW! That’s an incredible conclusion – if eating an apple is similar in efficacy to taking a prescription drug, which would you choose?
We know what we would choose, so with our newfound knowledge in hand, we’ll be stocking up on all varieties on our next trip to the grocery store. And we’ll happily say to all of you, “HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?”
Eat More Apples!.....and Wake Happy!
P.S. We did mention something upfront about American History and if you’ve made it this far, you might be wondering, like we did, where did the phrase” How do you like them apples?” come from? Or very likely, if you’re anything like our spouses and kids, you were not wondering that at all and rolling your eyes at what big dorks we are!
But here goes. The phrase “How do like them apples?” is an expression that likely originated during WW1 because the Allies’ anti-tank grenade was referred to as a “toffee apple” (due to its resemblance to an apple on a stick). This phrase was used the taunt the enemy as the Allies launched their grenades at them. Take that Axis Powers! And take that cholesterol!
Eat your apples. Or model them in a photo wearing your Cassia! We’re good with either ;-)