HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1942, Page 6

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

A PLEASANT TONIC.

APPLES OF DEFINITE MEDICAL

VALUE.

(By the Health Department.) There is such a thing as a pleasant tc.nic—palatable to take, and remarkable beneficial in its effect. An apple. People are inclined to regard the apple as a nice titbit, to be taken casually, or when one feels like it. But it has definite medical value and if people could get the apple habit, they would save themselves from the unpleasantness and expense of less tasty concoctions. ■ Packed inside the glowing skin of a ripe apple is a mass of living tissue —for the apple does not die when picked, but goes on storing up vitamins during the process of ripening. Admittedly, 82 per cent, of it is water, but it also contains small amounts of sugar and carbon compounds and organic =alts These salts are important. They not only contain small proportions of body-building elements such as phosphorus, iron, lime, and potash, but also help in two ways towards good health. They act as a gentle stimulus to' kidney action, and they .appear in the blood as alkaline carbonates that benefit the body cells-for the ability of the blood to carry carbon dioxide depends on the degree of alkalinity in the serum. If this alkalinity is i educed below a fixed point, a very distressing and dangerous condition known asacidosis results. . -In addition to its nutritive and laxative value, and its supply of vitamin C the apple has another important virtue—the delicate ethers which give its attractive taste. To be properly enjoyed, these require that the apple should be eaten skin and all, as the best flavour is just below the skm. And the roughage from the skin is of real internal value.