Red delicious, Northern Spy apples have most antioxidants, che...( ntributors to total antioxidant activit...),Health

ntributors to total antioxidant activity of the apples. Procyanidins accounted for about 60 percent of the antioxidant activity in the peel and 56 percent in the flesh.

• Red Delicious apples had two times more antioxidant activity than Empire apples, which had the least activity of any of the apples studied.

When taste and texture do not matter, choosing an apple with a high proportion of polyphenols in the flesh and skin can potentially produce more health benefits, Tsao said. But eating any apple is better than eating no apple at all. Elsewhere, three recent studies by researchers at Cornell University in New York offer plenty of other reasons to eat more apples:

• Alzheimers disease. In rats, quercetin another potent antioxidant abundant in apples appears to protect brain cells against oxidative stress, a tissuedamaging process associated with Alzheimers and other neurodegenerative disorders. This study was published in the December 1, 2004, issue of the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry.

• Heart disease. Antioxidants found in apple extracts could potentially lower "bad" cholesterol (low density lipoprotein, or LDL) by stimulating the production of LDL receptors in the liver, which help remove cholesterol from the blood. This mechanism is similar to that of statin drugs, researchers say. In March, these findings were presented at the ACS national meeting in San Diego.

• Breast cancer. Rats exposed to a known carcinogen and then fed the human equivalent of one, three or six apples a day respectively over 24 weeks were up to 44 percent less likely to develop breast tumors. That study was published in the April 6, 2005, issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

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Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
202-872-4400
American Chemical Society
20-May-2005

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