Things I did not know about apples
A few days ago, I mentioned to a friend that Michaela and I fairly easily go through two bags of apples per day. I knew that an apple a day keeps the doctor away (Or “ate an apfel avore gwain to bed makes the doctor beg his bread” (No, it’s not Swedish, it’s old English.)), but I was a bit curious to find out what six apples a day would do, so I did a bit of research on the subject of apples.
It turns out that while they may keep the doctor away (or begging for bread), they are likely to get you a closer relationship with your dentist, increasing the risk of caries significantly. On the other hand, they improve your gums and reduce the risk of mouth cancer. As always, there is not a simple black and white answer.
But on the subject of cancer, apples provide flavonoids and other fun antioxidants that will take care of free radicals and stop the general destruction they can cause. It turns out, though, that the more traditional variants (I can’t get used to the word “cultivars”) of apples are better than the modern ones and so I’m starting to believe that the mass-produced all-equal-size pip-less Braeburns that I’ve got into the habit of buying at Sainsbury’s will do absolutely nothing for us. It’s encouraging to see that another favourite, the Egremont Russet, scores very high on some compounds.
As an aside, it’s interesting to find that apples contain cinnamic acid, which is otherwise normally found in the oil of cinnamon. It’s like nature has known all along that apples should be eaten with cinnamon.
The conclusion of my quick research (also known as googling) is that the kind of apple we should really be eating, which would battle various cancers, contains the antioxidants that we have all learned to love and in addition to all that actually battles caries instead of causing it is called “dark chocolate”. Apparently, cocoa beans contain antibacterial agents and the cocoa butter coats the tooth to prevent plaque. But then I guess the fat contents of chocolate might be bad for the diet, so I guess what I’ll do is what we all like to do most: Resist change and continue as before. Or maybe brush my teeth a bit more regularly.
Unpredictable weight loss
To keep track of my weight loss, and to have something to display on dlade.net/weight, I weigh myself every Friday morning after going to the toilet and add the weight to a simple text file that the chart is built from. I always take a pleasure in having lost weight, and suffer severely when I see the chart go up again. This week, I was really looking forward to my weekly weigh-in. I had eaten less than my daily allowance every day of the week and run further than ever before.
This morning, I was shocked to see that I had actually gained weight compared to last week. I feel that I can see very clearly that my reflection in the mirror and the hands that I hold in front of me right now are a lot slimmer than they used to be, but the chart tells a different story. I still weigh the same that I did nine months ago. Oh well, I’ll just do what everyone else does and blame it on my body building muscle or retaining water or something…
Before and after
I was reminded tonight of my old before and after picture on flickr from a bit over a year ago, which is my most viewed picture there, and decided that it was time I made a new one. This new one uses pictures separated by exactly two years. Both pictures are taken around Christmas, both in Slovakia and I’m wearing the same scarf and similar jackets. Obviously, my taste in clothes hasn’t changed as much as I thought over this time period. Trust me when I say that the clothes I wear underneath the jacket are very different, though. It’s amazing how much more fun it is to shop for clothes when the shops actually sell stuff that can be pulled over your body.
Anyway, here is the new picture:
