Growing and eating your own apples and other fruit promotes good health whether through diet, outdoor physical activity, the wider therapeutic effects of growing or the opportunity to work with others. More widely, food miles are minimized, imports are lessened and food security is increased.

 If you grow your own you may well consume more fruit than you otherwise would, which is well and good. However, this article cautions against a dutiful over-consumption, as might occur for example if you gave much weight to the claimed health benefits of specific constituents of apples such as the anti-oxidant phenolics.

 Phenolics are a diverse and very widely occurring group of plant constituents, and some are supposed to be ‘functional’, that is they have specific physiological effects that are beneficial over and above their food value. Generally, functional foods, which include vitamins, are said to improve health or reduce the risk of disease.

 The functional phenolics are anti-oxidants, and together with other anti-oxidants such as Vitamins C and E they mop up ‘free radicals’, a kind of reactive oxygen. Free radicals are generated normally in the healthy body and are essential for some functions such as fighting bacterial infection, but they are elevated by inflammation, pollution, cigarette smoke, sunshine, overeating and exercise. They are also known to be capable of damaging the lining of arteries and DNA.

 In large reputable trials reviewed by Goldacre (2009), low blood levels of anti-oxidants were associated with a high incidence of cancer and heart disease, as the theory above suggests. However, giving anti-oxidant supplements had no effect or made people worse off, an apparently contradictory result that is not uncommon: for instance, in women, calcium supplements slow osteoporosis but increase the risk of heart attack, and grapefruit juice in high doses can interfere dangerously with numerous medications.

 The difficulty is that, even in large epidemiological trials, reported correlations between dietary variables and disease are generally weak, so that unstudied factors (say of lifestyle) can confound the result, making it potentially misleading. Not eating a balanced diet could be associated with many other prejudicial circumstances. Does a moderate intake of red wine promote good health or does it just reflect good health in the first place? Given the prevailing anxieties about public health such subtleties are easily lost, and one should be wary of claims of specific health benefits for functional foods.

Eating more fruit may well be good for you but only, I suggest, if you have an appetite for it. I leave the last word to Goldacre:

If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page … Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don’t drink too much, don’t smoke, and don’t get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health.

 Reference

  Goldacre, B. (2009). Bad Science. Harper Perennial, London. ISBN 9780-00-728487-0.