Confirming previous “gut instinct” about the health benefits of apples, Denmark scientists find that consumption of apples raises levels of beneficial bacteria present in the digestive tract.
The adoption of the adage “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” suggests that our “gut instinct” has speculated that apples confer a variety of health benefits. Andrea Wilcks, from the University of Denmark’s National Food Institute (Denmark), and colleagues engaged a lab animal model to investigate the effects of apple and apple product consumption on microbial balance in the digestive tract. The team fed the animals a diet of whole apples as well as apple-derived products such as apple juice and puree. They found that the apples delivered a hearty dose of pectin, a type of dietary fiber present in apples, and consequently raised the amounts of “friendly bacteria,” that is — those bacteria strains that are associated with improved intestinal health. The team concludes that: “Our findings show that consumption of apple pectin (7% in the diet) increases the population of butyrate- and beta-glucuronidase producing Clostridiales, and decreases the population of specific species within the Bacteroidetes group.”
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Tine R Licht, Max Hansen, Anders Bergstrom, Morten Poulsen, Britta N Krath, Jaroslaw Markowski, Lars O Dragsted, Andrea Wilcks. “Effects of apples and specific apple components on the cecal environment of conventional rats: role of apple pectin.” BMC Microbiology 2010, 10:13doi:10.1186/1471-2180-10-13.