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Benefits & Uses of Apples

By Laura Ng

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 21Aug2007 Word count: 454 Viewed: 360 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

There are more than what you might have learned about benefits and uses of apples. However though, I'll just go through the key benefits of apples and how you can use them to improve your health. Of course, I'll show you how to choose apples to get the best bang for your buck. Let's roll out.

Apples' Health Benefits

A fresh apple is the ideal, healthy snack for you because it's easy to carry, filling, juicy and refreshing. Some varieties provide you with a good source of vitamin C, which is an antioxidant and helps to improve and maintain your immune system.

Apples also carry relatively low calories and contain high level of fructose. This natural sugar, although sweeter than sucrose (main component of cane sugar), will get metabolized slowly when gets into your body, thereby helping you to control your blood sugar levels.

Uses of Apples

In herbal medicine, you'll see people using ripe, uncooked apples to treat constipation, while you can eat it stewed for treating diarrhea and gastroenteritis. You can also use apples in poultices for skin inflammations.

How about having dried apples as snack? Can dried apples benefit your health as well? To understand that, let's go take a look at how you make dried apples.

First, you expose apple slices to the fumes of burning sulphur to prevent them from browning, then you dry in the hot sun on wire trays. As they lose the moist, natural sugars in them become concentrated, which explains why athletes value dried apples as a rich source of carbohydrate that can quickly convert to energy for their usage.

In case you don't know, dried apples contain six times more calories than fresh ones. They got lots of fiber and moderate source of iron. However, the downside for dried apples is their loss of vitamin C through the drying process. So, you got to balance your apple diet between fresh and dried, and not simply stick to dried apples only.

Oh, here's another good use and benefit of apples. You can place it with other fruits like apricots in a bag for 2 - 4 days to help apricots ripen faster. Now you know the benefits and uses of apples, let's see how to choose apples to make sure you get the best bang for your buck.

How to Choose Apples

When choosing apples, make sure they're firm to the touch. You should see no brown bruises on its peel. And pay attention to the color, regardless of the types of apple, it should be bright, relatively even and clear. Look at the size too. Large apples are more likely to be overripe. Sniff and it should give you a fresh rather than a musty smell.

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