Apple a Day

Most everyone knows the old adage, an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and now scientists have shown that there's more truth to the statement than you might think. I just read an interesting article that reported on a recent study published in the journal Thorax that show that the children of women who ate apples frequently during pregnancy had fewer asthma-related wheezing incidents, and that the children of women who ate plenty of fish during pregnancy had less trouble with eczema.

One thing about the article that stuck with me was a quote attributed to the scientists who did the study: "The advantages of studying foods are that they contain a mixture of micronutrients that may contribute more than the sum of their parts, and that associations with micronutrients that may be currently unrecognised or not easily quantifiable can be examined." Real foods do contain micronutrients that are simply missing from the processed products that line store shelves.