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Dried Apples Versus Cholesterol

Which common dried fruit is the most antioxidant-packed: apple rings, dried apricots, dried cherries, dried mango, prunes, or raisins?

January 10, 2012 |
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Supplementary Info

Dried Apples Versus Cholesterol, 4.6 out of 5 based on 5 ratings

Sources Cited

Carlsen MH, Halvorsen BL, Holte K, Bøhn SK, Dragland S, Sampson L, Willey C, Senoo H, Umezono Y, Sanada C, Barikmo I, Berhe N, Willett WC, Phillips KM, Jacobs DR Jr, Blomhoff R. The total antioxidant content of more than 3100 foods, beverages, spices, herbs and supplements used worldwide. Nutr J. 2010 Jan 22;9:3.

Sheau C Chai, Shirin Hooshmand, Raz L Saadat and Bahram H Arjmandi. Daily apple consumption promotes cardiovascular health in postmenopausal women. The FASEB Journal. 2011;25:971.10

Acknowledgements

Images thanks to Scott Ehardt, Asabengurtza, Yosri, storebukkebruse, and Pvt pauline, via Wikimedia Commons.

Transcript

Dried fruit are convenient and packed with nutrition, but which ones are the best. Here’s raisins. Now this is per serving, per ounce, not per cup like with the berries. Here’s prunes, dried mangoes, which I love, so I was happy about. Dried apricots. Dried cherries, through the roof, with… goji berries at the top.

They also analyzed dried apple, where do you think they fit? I would have guessed towards the bottom, maybe even lower than raisins, but I would have been wrong. Dried apple rings landed way up here, making them one of the healthiest dried fruits on the planet.

In fact a preliminary report was released at a nutrition conference this year suggesting that daily dried apple consumption promotes cardiovascular health in postmenopausal women. Split the women into two groups and those forced to eat about 3 ounces of dried apple rings a day for a year saw their bad cholesterol drop 23%—that’s huge! LDL dropped 23%! The level of inflammation in their bodies plummeted, and you’d think if you made people add 240 calories worth of snacks to their daily diet they’d gain weight, but no they actually lost a couple pounds as a bonus.

To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, and quotes to which Dr. Greger may be referring watch the above video. This is just an approximation of the audio contributed by MaryAnn Allison.

To help out on the site please email <a
href=“mailto:volunteer@nutritionfacts.org”>volunteer@nutritionfacts.org

Dr. Michael Greger

Doctor's Note

Please feel free to post any ask-the-doctor type questions here in the comments section and I’d be happy to try to answer them. Check out the other videos on fruits and don't miss all the videos on ranking foods. And there are 1,449 subjects covered in the rest of my videos–please feel free to explore them!

Also, check out my associated blog posts for more context: Acai to Zucchini: antioxidant food rankings, Amla: Indian gooseberries vs. cancer, diabetes, and cholesterol, The Most Anti-Inflammatory Mushroom, Stool Size and Breast Cancer Risk, and The Anti-Wrinkle Diet

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/mgreger/ Michael Greger M.D.

    Please feel free to post any ask-the-doctor type questions here in the comments section and I’d be happy to try to answer them. Check out the other videos on fruits and don’t miss all the videos on ranking foods. And there are 1,449 subjects covered in the rest of my videos–please feel free to explore them!

    • Krista

      I’d really like to know if eating an apple, raw, each day would have similar effects. Does it have to be dried to give those kinds of results?

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/rami/ Rami

    Must they be dried? How about merely one raw apple, with the skin, a day? Is there something about the drying process that makes them particularly antioxidant-rich?

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/ksduck/ ksduck

    This is a bit unrelated, but I eat a plant-based diet. I’m also a 20-something year old woman of child bearing age who runs, so making sure I’m getting enough iron from plant sources is important to me. I’ve heard that tannins in coffee, tea, and chocolate can hinder the adsorption of iron when consumed together. Is there evidence to support this? Thank you!

    • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/mgreger/ Michael Greger M.D.

      Quoting from “Green tea does not inhibit iron absorption” published 2009 in the International Journal of Cardiology, “The only reference that I could find in the literature about a negative effect of tea drinking on iron absorption came from Tunisia. But the experiment was carried out on rats. Therefore, unless you are a rat and a rat in Tunisia, you should not worry about development of iron deficiency anemia from tea drinking.” In 2008, though, a study in India found that drinking tea with meals could cut iron absorption in half. This is a function of publication delays. The cardiology journal piece was published in 2009 but was written in 2007, before the India study surfaced. The good news, though, is that the study found that vitamin C triples iron absorption, so as long as you’re drinking tea with lemon, or eating vitamin C rich foods at your meals (like citrus, broccoli, tropical fruits, bell peppers, etc.) then this shouldn’t be an issue. If, however, you don’t like lemon (and lemon in coffee? Yuck!) and aren’t eating these kinds of foods, then menstruating women may want to lay off tea and coffee (and cocoa and peppermint tea)during meals and up to an hour before to maximize iron absorption. In men (and nonmenstruating women), the reduction of iron absorption may not necessarily be a bad thing. In fact, the effect of coffee on iron absorption has been used to explain why coffee consumption has been found to be protective against diseases tied with iron overload like diabetes and gout.

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/lvmichele/ LVMichele

    I’ve been playing with using dates & raisins to sweeten dishes. How would dates rank next to raisins for antioxidants & nutritional value?

    • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/mgreger/ Michael Greger M.D.

      I’m so glad you’re experimenting with whole food sweeteners! I have a video on dates here: Are Dates Good For You? I’ll keep an eye out for comparative data. I also have more videos on raisins, like this one: The Healthiest Raisin.

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/rosaleah/ rosaleah

    I eat dried fruits (prunes, raisins, apricots and now apples)daily. Please tell me your thoughts about what may be the cumulative effects on an aging body of sulphur dioxide preservatives used in processing fruits for drying.

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/thea/ Thea

    Dried mangos can be hard to find without sugar. I found some on Amazon, but before I ordered them, I noticed that my local Trader Joes store has un-sweetened dried mangoes! They taste absolutely delicious. When torn into little pieces, they can take the place of raisins on the morning oatmeal. Yumm.

    So, those of you who want the mangoes, you don’t have to settle for sugar-crusted. Note: sadly, the Trader Joes version is *not* organic. The one I found on Amazon is.

  • http://nutritionfacts.org/members/rosaleah/ rosaleah

    Thanks for your response about sulphur dioxide with relevant videos to view.

  • Avram

    I have recently read up on an essential oil ‘helichrysum’ and what is said is mindblowing. Is it really a cell-regenerator.

  • Crumbler

    Somehow I have gotten the idea that harmful substances in our environment,(either in water or air or ingested) is what causes tears in the inner lining of our coronary arteries. Then comes the cholesterol and other substances to repair the tear and this is what causes the athlersclerosis. If by chance this is close to correct, why isnt the emphesis on preventing the tears. I have never been convinced that cholesterol is the basic culprit seeing as h ow our body manufactures the amount of cholesterol it needs……or have I missed the mark ?

  • http://www.facebook.com/anita.burns1 Anita Burns

    How do I keep my home-dried fruit from developing bugs?

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