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Red Delicious the most nutritious apple: study
CTV.ca News Staff
It would appear that when you compare apples to apples, not all are equal when it comes to nutrition.
A study by federal scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada finds that of the most popular varieties of apple grown in Ontario, the Red Delicious is the most nutritious.
The researchers evaluated eight apple varieties popular in Canada: Red Delicious, McIntosh, Cortland, Northern Spy, Ida Red, Golden Delicious, Mutsu and Empire apples.
All are loaded with vitamin C and other nutrients. But the researchers found that the skin of the Red Delicious apple contained more than five times as many antioxidants as Empire apples, the variety at the bottom of the list.
"Redder apples are generally richer in antioxidants than pale coloured apples,'' says the study's lead researcher, Rong Tsao.
If you insist on eating peeled apples -- and Tsao hopes you don't -- the flesh of the Northern Spy was found to be richest in antioxidants, while the Empire and the Mutsu had the lowest levels in both their flesh and skin.
All the apples used in the study were grown at the same orchard near Woodstock, Ont. under the same conditions, to guarantee the consistency of the results.
Tsao's study will be published this week in the American Chemical Society's peer-reviewed Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Antioxidants are the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that help us fight cancers and cardiovascular diseases, says the researcher. They fight off so-called free radicals in our body that are thought to contribute to diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
The study pinpoints for the first time the individual molecules that contribute most to antioxidant activities in apples. Those molecules, called polyphenols, were found to be much more prevalent in the skin of the apple than in the flesh of the fruit.
Now that scientists have identified those molecules, they can work to produce new breeds of apples that could potentially contain more concentrated nutritional benefits.
Tsao plans to use his findings to work with companies in the apple juicing industry to create new products from apple waste.
The juicing industry typically discards the peels, he said, which are rich in antioxidants. That material could be reworked and sold as a new kind of nutritional product.
CTV.ca News Staff
It would appear that when you compare apples to apples, not all are equal when it comes to nutrition.
A study by federal scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada finds that of the most popular varieties of apple grown in Ontario, the Red Delicious is the most nutritious.
The researchers evaluated eight apple varieties popular in Canada: Red Delicious, McIntosh, Cortland, Northern Spy, Ida Red, Golden Delicious, Mutsu and Empire apples.
All are loaded with vitamin C and other nutrients. But the researchers found that the skin of the Red Delicious apple contained more than five times as many antioxidants as Empire apples, the variety at the bottom of the list.
"Redder apples are generally richer in antioxidants than pale coloured apples,'' says the study's lead researcher, Rong Tsao.
If you insist on eating peeled apples -- and Tsao hopes you don't -- the flesh of the Northern Spy was found to be richest in antioxidants, while the Empire and the Mutsu had the lowest levels in both their flesh and skin.
All the apples used in the study were grown at the same orchard near Woodstock, Ont. under the same conditions, to guarantee the consistency of the results.
Tsao's study will be published this week in the American Chemical Society's peer-reviewed Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Antioxidants are the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that help us fight cancers and cardiovascular diseases, says the researcher. They fight off so-called free radicals in our body that are thought to contribute to diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
The study pinpoints for the first time the individual molecules that contribute most to antioxidant activities in apples. Those molecules, called polyphenols, were found to be much more prevalent in the skin of the apple than in the flesh of the fruit.
Now that scientists have identified those molecules, they can work to produce new breeds of apples that could potentially contain more concentrated nutritional benefits.
Tsao plans to use his findings to work with companies in the apple juicing industry to create new products from apple waste.
The juicing industry typically discards the peels, he said, which are rich in antioxidants. That material could be reworked and sold as a new kind of nutritional product.
