ALL ABOUT AN APPLE.

New Zealand Journal of Agriculture, Volume XII, Issue 4, 20 April 1916, Page 325

ALL ABOUT AN APPLE.

H. Benjafield,

M. 8., in the “ Fruit World of Australasia.”

As both food and medicine an apple is a wonderful example. Professor McAlpine gives us the accompanying diagram, of which the following is an explanation in plain English. Suppose this apple to be the size of a large breakfast-cup, and into this cup you put nearly half a pint of water, and stir into it—of concentrated food like that contained in an egg, half a teaspoonful; of fatty stuff like butter, a little less than half a teaspoonful; of sugars, both cane and grape sugar, two tablespoonfuls ; of mineral matter, as much as will lie .on a sixpence; of acids, a little more than half a teaspoonful ; of skin and core, about two-thirds of a teaspoonful.

From a medical point of view we look upon each of these elements as follows : The food, or protein, is pure and strengthening, and exists in the apple combined

with sugars and acids, and when taken enters rapidly into the muscles, where it is readily broken up, imparting heat and strength, so that the athlete under great exertion soon gets the stimulus.

The fatty matters are so combined with acids that even the most delicate child does not recognize that he is taking fat when he is eating an apple.

The sugars, or carbohydrates, form the most attractive as they are the most nourishing part of the fruit. And these sugars are just crystallized sunshine, and are far more digestible than any ordinary sugar. The child from babyhood just loves it, and it is excellent food for him. In the adult, especially in advanced age, ordinary chemically prepared sugar when taken freely produces rheumatism, gout, and suchlike diseases, but these sugars never set up any of these troubles ; indeed, gouty people get relief from fruit.

The mineral matter in the apple is one of Nature’s wonders. The blood must keep its red colour or it cannot do its work in the body, and we die. When we eat an apple we take just the right dose of iron which the blood needs, and the invalid with poor blood will get iron in the apple which is far more easily absorbed by the blood than is any preparation of iron compounded by the chemist. Lime is found in the apple, in the same form as it is found in our bones, and in the apple the lime is so beautifully combined with phosphoric acid that when an apple is eaten the bones of the body are nourished by these lime salts, and by these additions of lime the child is able to build up the young growing bone. Rickety children have bones deficient in lime. I have never seen rickets or soft bones in a Tasmanian orchard.

Magnesia ! Yes, Nature has placed in the apple quite a nice little dose of magnesia, and it helps to keep off rheumatism by purifying the blood and assisting the bowels.

Phosphorus : Professor Schaffer told us recently in the great scientific lecture of the year that life could not exist without phosphorus, and in the apple this great nerve-tonic exists in quite a full dose, and it exists in its most soluble form as phosphoric acid.

Sulphur, as sulphuric acid, is also a great blood-purifier, and has an especial effect on blood and skin diseases.

There is just one more thing which science has not yet explained, and that is the wonderful life processes by which all these tasteless elements were blended together into a beautiful fruit and a perftect food.

The bee loves honey because its nature cries for a perfect food, and for the same reason the child cries for an apple, which will help its digestion, will make its blood richer, will strengthen its muscles, and stimulate and feed its brain and nerves. The sailor fed on salt meat and biscuit dreams of an apple as he is dying of scurvy, and our soldiers write me from the trenches that an apple a day would greatly help them with their bully-beef-and-biscuit diet.