Apples

Apples are rich in sugars (glucose, fructose and sucrose) but have only a trace of starch. They provide all the carbohydrate food fibres, cellulose, hemi-cellulose, pectins (which comprise 70 percent of total fibre in an apple's flesh), plus the noncarbohydrate food fibre lignin, in the peel. Apples have a little Protein, very little fat, and no cholestrol. Apples have small amounts of vitamin A and the B vitamins, plus vitamin C. A medium apple supplies 6 mg vitamin C, 20 percent of the RDA for a healthy adult. Ounce for ounce, apples have about a quarter the potassium of fresh oranges.

The most nutritious way to serve this food
Fresh and unpeeled, to take advantage of the fibre in the peel and preserve the vitamin C, which is destroyed by the heat of cooking.

Storing
Store apples in the fridge. Cool storage keeps them from losing the natural moisture that makes them crisp. It also keeps them from turning brown inside, near the core, a phenomenon that occurs when apples are stored at warm temperatures. Apples can be kept in a cool, dark cabinet with plenty of circulating air. Check the apples from time to time. They store well, but the longer the storage, the greater the natural loss of moisture and the more likely chance that even the crispest apple will begin to taste mealy.

Other items of interest

Preparation
Don't peel or slice an apple until you are ready to use it. When you cut the apple you trigger the browning reaction. Acid slows the browning reaction (but will not stop it completely). Dip raw sliced and or peeled apples into a solution of lemon juice and water, or vinegar and water, or mix them with citrus fruits in a fruit salad.

Cooking reactions
When you cook an unpeeled apple, insoluble cellulose and lignin will hold the peel intact through all normal cooking. The flesh of the apple, though, will fall apart as the pectin in its cell walls dissolves and the water inside its cells swells, rupturing the cell walls and turning the apples into apple sauce. Commercial bakers keep the apples in their apple pies firm by treating them with calcium; home bakers have to rely on careful timing. To prevent baked apples from melting into mush, core the apple and fill the centre with sugar or raisins to absorb the moisture released as the apple cooks. Cutting away a circle of peel away at the top will allow the fruit to swell without splitting the skin. Red apple skins are coloured with red anthocyanin pigments. When an apple is cooked with sugar, the anthocyanins and the sugars combine to form irreversible brownish compounds.

Medical uses and/or benefits
As an antidiarrhoeal. The pectin in apple is a natural anti-diarrhoeal that helps solidify stool. Grated raw apple is sometimes used as a folk remedy for diarrhoea, and purified pectin is an ingredient in many over-the-counter anti-diarrhoeals such as kaolin.
Lower absorption of dietary fats. Apples are rich in pectin, which appears to interfere with the body's absorption of dietary fats. The exact mechanism by which this occurs is still unknown, but one theory is that the pectins in the apple form a gel in your stomach that soaks up fats and keeps them from being absorbed by your body.