IS IT TRUE THAT APPLES ARE LESS NUTRIENT THAN EVERYWHERE?

IS IT TRUE THAT APPLES ARE LESS NUTRIENT THAN EVERYWHERE?

Apples like other fruits and vegetables are suspected to have lost much of their vitamin and mineral content as selections by farmers. But this idea is as widespread as it is unfounded! Explanations.


"It was better before," we hear often. In this way, apples would have become floury today and would have no taste. Worse: they would contain even less vitamin C than those grown in the 1950s!

This idea, absolutely false, is maintained by scientific studies essentially carried out in the United States and England at the end of the 1990s. These publications affirmed at the time that, for sixty years, the quantities of vitamins and minerals had drastically decreased, not only in apples, but more widely in all fruits and vegetables. So, our apples would contain 100 times less vitamin C than in 1950, our carrots would have lost 75% of their magnesium and our spinach more than 90% of their copper!

In reality, there is no more than sixty years ago, only one kind of apple, but a multitude of varieties (about a thousand in the world) with very different nutritional contents. However, with equal variety, fruits or vegetables have hardly seen their contributions decrease. "The vitamin C content of apples differs by at least a factor of 10 depending on the variety, the exposure of the fruit, the date of harvest and the shelf life ... and this has not changed since the 1950s" says Catherine Renard, director of the plant products safety and quality unit at the University of Avignon.

For example, data from 1947 to 1959 indicate that, depending on apple varieties, vitamin C levels can vary from 3 to 30 milligrams per 100 grams of fruit when, in 2013, the Center for Information on the Quality of Foods assessed their content between 1 and 25 mg / 100 g.

Tip: focus on seasonal varieties

However, we can not ignore that genetic selection, cultivation methods, processing conditions and conservation can actually contribute to depleting the nutritional qualities of our fruits and vegetables. Indeed, by increasing the rate of plant growth, genetic selection and use of fertilizers, in fact, restrict the period of development of micronutrients ...

To benefit from all the virtues of our apples or carrots, it is therefore advisable to diversify the varieties by favoring, as far as possible, those of season - in October, for example, the Belles de Boskoop or the Fuji -, and limiting their conservation and transformation. Because vitamin C is very labile: an apple kept in the fridge for a year does not contain any more! This is one of the reasons that made tomatoes lose their taste ...