Mysteries! Why are apples SO healthy for diabetics? Where has Em been this week? Why fewer posts? All will be revealed.
First, apples. Like many of our most-used fruits, botanically, apples are a member of the Rose Family, but they are also very special, independently. In their skins, there is a natural source of chromium, a critical mineral in which most diabetics are seriously deficient (along with the majority of the American population).
Chromium is an essential link in the biochemistry of changing the food we eat into “blood sugar” and the process whereby blood sugar accesses, and then fuels, the mitochondrial cellular furnaces of our individual cells. Without enough chromium, insulin cannot operate properly, and blood sugar is turned into fat rather than energy.
Chromium is also needed by the tiniest eye muscles which control your eyes. And, as many diabetics have eye problems, that is another reason to insure that you are getting enough chromium daily. Stay within the daily guidelines, as too much chromium is NOT a good idea.
As we need to eat the skin, all apples we eat should be Organic. Any chemicals sprayed on the fruit are harbored in the skin, and peeling the apple becomes necessary. Even though there is other nutritional benefit to eating the “rest” of the apple, for diabetics and anyone deficient in chromium, the apple’s skin is where the mother-lode is! No wonder ”an apple a day keeps the doctor away’!
Apples are a wonderful small package of nutrition which you can take anywhere, and you should always have some as healthy snacks ready for children and for yourself, even at work, as one of your tools to keep blood sugar stable.
Make sure to pre-digest them well by patiently chewing the apples (to liquid) before swallowing. The alkalizing saliva-mixing process spares your pancreas extra-duty later in the digestive process, as all food has to be properly alkaline before it can enter the small intestine to be absorbed into your body. Chewing every food well (masticating) all the way to liquid also gives your mind time to catch-up with your mouth, as satiety signals from the brain, which take 20 minutes to form and be received, can say “I’m satisfied”, “I’m full” while you have eaten much less quantity of food, if you have spent the time carefully chewing.
I starting thinking more about apples last night while I was watching a re-run of the previously partially-seen episode of the game-show “1 Against 100″. The particpants were asked whether “Braeburn, Rome and Gravenstein” were names of apple varieties, the names of the partners on the TV program ”Boston Legal” and some other trio option. How many of the audience participation group got it wrong?
I think it was a whopping 44% who did not know that Braeburn, Rome and Gravenstein are the names of apple varieties!
This is a huge condemnation of general ignorance about the Basics of the food we eat. Even I was shocked at the depth-of-ignorance.
Many people are NOT making knowledge of food (and also what’s healthy) a priority in their lives.
If they eat food from a supermarket (versus just eating at restaurants), then are they just sweeping in, grabbing a few mostly-unknown or not cared about items to stuff their face, and then leaving? I do see people behaving that way. Mostly young people, sadly. Maybe that’s a big reason diabetes among young people is soaring.
I am always watching what other people buy. It’s not for prurient reasons; it’s “market research”, and is an independent epidemiological study of real Life. Usually, I am disappointed at the majority of people’s food purchase choices. Sad comment, and stemming, I think, because of lack of education. Not everythig that’s touted as being healthy is right, or right for you, individually.
Home Economics, where many of these lessons were formally taught (usually just to girls — but, boys must know this, too!), was taken out of the schools’ curriculums decades ago, for “money” reasons, ostensibly, but we are paying-the-price in money-costs from our own pocket and other agencies’ budgets now, and in the intervening decades, through the sinking health status of Americans and other first-world populations.
Back to apples. Many of the commonly eaten apples are not native to the United States. I suggest trying lots of different varieties, as taste and textures differ, which leads them to be used differently.
Personally, I only like crisp apples, with a good sweet-tart mix, tending a tiny bit toward the sweeter side. Consequently, my favorite apple is Gala (and Jonathans in their too short season), but I also like the slightly tarter Braeburn, MacIntosh, real (Aussie) Granny Smith and sometimes, Fuji and Winesap. Every once in a while, I get to taste an “heirloom variety”, and those have been treats! I liked the Cox Pippin and Northern Spy (this is still used commercially in the Eastern United States, where I first tasted it about 30 years ago).
Heirloom types of apples are available from special nurseries, and they deserve to be grown. Be a modern day “Johnny Appleseed”. (Read more about the real person in the links below.)
Come visit the most ancient Western America apple tree planted in 1824 near historic Fort Vancouver, Vancouver, Washington, site of Western America’s first British outpost, the Hudson Bay Company. This tree is a living National Treasure, still surviving in a tiny enclave at the interchange of 2 major freeways! (Washington state is famous, worldwide, for its apples as is Oregon, on the other side of the Columbia River, especially around the town of Hood River near Mt. Hood). Washington “state’s orchards supposedly began from seeds of an apple given to Captain Aemilius Simpson of the Hudson Bay Company by a young woman from London at a farewell party. To please her, he had kept the seeds and planted them at Fort Vancouver, Washington in 1824. Only one of the seeds sprouted, and the tree in its first producing year bore only one apple but in following years bore many more.”
In my home of 20 years, which I designed and built, I incorporated an orchard of mostly dwarf fruit trees, with a few standard size. For apples, we had planted a 4-way variety which included Jonathan, a rare-for-the-West Northern Spy and a beautiful, true-Aussie caliber Granny Smith. Plant trees. It’s one of the ways to create your legacy. Especially concentrate on any poorly used local land or rehabilitating areas of devastation e.g. the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. It needs lots of hands and hearts to repair the Earth.
In my new home, unfortunately, the only apple tree I have in this home (I’ve been here 1 year) is a Golden Delicious, which must be used for cooking, as it is so soft (even mealy). I let the birds eat the whole crop (and they did, to the very last of hundreds of apples).
I do not like cooking fruit. I believe cooking is only to be done to preserve it in times of need. Otherwise, cooking takes away nutrition, acidifies the pH of the food and leaves it enzymatically dead. Try not to cook any of your fruit and most of your vegetables. Raw is always best.
Americans eat an average of less than one apple a week. Italians and Belgians eat 3 times that many, and the French consume 5 times as many as Americans (but mostly as cider). The Dutch come closest to actually having each individual eating a raw apple a day!
Apples are an excellent alkaline food which is anti-toxic and their malic and tartatric acids help clean your bowel and maintain friendly bacteria there. Their pectin gel helps prevent the putrefaction of protein in our long (vegetarian) gut (carnivores have a short gut). At 85% water, they are a superior source of natural bio-water to immediately slake cellular thirst.
Apples are a sweet-treat, low on the glycemic index and a top-quality, in-season apple can be a good, satisfying dessert all alone. Have fun this fall as the new apples come in, and if you want to “supplement” with chromium in the meantime, check with your physician, as getting more normal amounts of chromium will lessen your need for any diabetes medication you are on, over time, as your body begins to use its insulin better.
To supplement, make sure you are getting “trivalent chromium with GTF” (Glucose Tolerance Factor). I’ll write more about apples again, later.
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Now, where have I been and why am I not writing as often at the moment?
Well, dear reader, this blog is a labor of love, but it is not letting me contribute to my family financially. I’ve been spending the last 3 weeks (and at least a few more to go) in a total immersion-course for upgrading my knowledge of webskills and marketing online. Lots of homework and I’m behind, even so.
As a committment to you, I will keep this blog as commerical-free as I can, but I will let you know about my websites, when I finally have built them.This way, you can help me have the time to write to aid you and help my family not lose my earning power, if you find my other websites useful for your purchases. It’s become a necessity, and I think it’s why good, independent blogs, without commercials, are hard to find. It just takes SO much time to research and write technical blogs.
Any way, I missed meeting you, dear reader, in cyberspace, and I will try to keep short articles coming until I have some websites up and running. Please wish me luck.
Best to all — Em
References:
http://www.lostindiana.net/html/johnny_appleseed.html
http://www.raintreenursery.com/seed.html
http://druidry.org/obod/trees/apple.html
http://www.theheartofnewengland.com/Heirloom-Apples.html
http://www.raintreenursery.com/
(c)2007 Em http://diabetesdietdialogue.wordpress.com
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