I have a confession to make. This autumn I have eaten so, so many apples. Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Gala—anything malic, ranging broadly from the green, red and yellow varieties, reflecting the color palette for fall foliage. Apples that you can crunch into and savor the sweet, slightly acerbic flavor bursting on your tongue, the trickles of juice dripping down your chin and between your fingers.
My sudden irrepressible obsession with the diverse fruit stems from a childhood devoid of eating apples. In elementary school, I discovered at snack time that I couldn’t bite into an apple like other kids could. Apple skins gave me a rash, made my lips tingle and itched my throat. With a deadly peanut allergy, and already allergic to everything else under the sun, I was hardly nonplussed adding apples to my growing list of foods to avoid.
However, some allergies can be outgrown, and this discovery has recently lent me a lifeline to the apple basket in my kitchen. Indeed, my apple eating has transformed into a religion and a ritual, from the first satisfying bite past the crisply taut skin to my methodical way around to the seedy core. My gleeful overcompensation for a lifetime of deprived apple eating has come much to my family’s annoyance, as long-time members of the apple cult who now face an invasion of their treasured supply.
In fact, apples now occupy an essential part of my diet. Depending on the day, I consume up to three or four, typically varying in type: some from the grocery store and others shipped directly from the orchard.
Though research has found no conclusive evidence to suggest that the adage “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” is true, the fruit does fulfill all the standards of what a proper snack should be. Healthy and delicious, apples provide not only many nutrients and antioxidants, but are also one of those rare foods that are both low-calorie and still fulfilling, since they are approximately 85 percent water by weight.
I have already seen a significant improvement in my eating habits thanks to apples forming a considerable chunk of my diet. Before racing out the door in the mornings on weekdays, I reach not for the breakfast muffins or pastries, but for the apples—once a ripe source of fear and enmity, now a cherished joy that forces me out of bed. For me at least, that is what I call self-improvement.
Photo courtesy of Tom Gill/Flickr
