Wash the apple. Do so even if it is an organic apple.
Chew well and eat the apple with the skin because the skin contains the most interesting compounds, those that have the task of protecting the apple and warding off fungi and bacteria.
Detailed Nutritional Information per Person for this Recipe
The majority of the nutritional information comes from the USDA (US Department of Agriculture). This means that the information for natural products is often incomplete or only given within broader categories, whereas in most cases products made from these have more complete information displayed.
If we take flaxseed, for example, the important essential amino acid ALA (omega-3) is only included in an overarching category whereas for flaxseed oil ALA is listed specifically. In time, we will be able to change this, but it will require a lot of work. An “i” appears behind ingredients that have been adjusted and an explanation appears when you hover over this symbol.
For Erb Muesli, the original calculations resulted in 48 % of the daily requirement of ALA — but with the correction, we see that the muesli actually covers >100 % of the necessary recommendation for the omega-3 fatty acid ALA. Our goal is to eventually be able to compare the nutritional value of our recipes with those that are used in conventional western lifestyles.
If you eat an apple every day, you are doing a lot of good for your health and truly keeping the doctor away. A classic superfood.
“An apple a day keeps the doctor away” is a well-known saying that originated in Wales, where it first appeared in a magazine as: “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.”
At the beginning of the twentieth century, apples would have been called a superfood because they were commonly recommended as a way to increase longevity. According to Wikipedia, the current form of the saying comes from Elizabeth Mary Wright, the wife of philologist Joseph Wright, and was published in the book “Rustic Speech and Folklore” (1913).
From Ärzte Zeitung online (Physicians news online), April 13, 2015: After a raw analysis of the data, it was found that those who eat an apple daily actually had significantly fewer visits to the doctor: 39 % had either not been or been to the doctor only once in the twelve months prior to the survey; for the people who didn’t eat apples, it was only 33 %. However, the differences were less striking when it was taken into account that the apple eaters had a higher level of education, smoked less often, earned more, and were thinner.
Only 9% of the 8700 adults in the 2007–10 NHANES Study regularly ate an apple. The consumption of prescription drugs was also investigated: Just under 48 % of the apple eaters had not needed prescription drugs in the previous month, whereas only 42 % of those who didn’t eat apples were in this category. The difference remained significant even when lifestyle and sociodemographic factors were taken into account.
NHANES stands for National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.
Tips
Select apples that aren’t too sweet but that are more fruity; these will contain more of the good fruit acids.
We recommend eating an apple as a snack in the afternoon and not in the evening as fruit stimulates the digestive system. This is because modern apple cultivation isn’t comparable with earlier practices, and the apples today are much sweeter.
Under the rubric “Recipes” on our website, you can enter the keyword “daily requirement” in the search bar to get more tips about the recommended daily requirements for specific vitamins and minerals, for example, Daily Requirement for Selenium.
Alternate preparation
The daily apple is an ingredient — but less than a whole apple is used — in Erb Muesli as well as in the original Bircher Muesli created by Dr. med. Max Bircher-Benner.
