Cloudy apple juice 'healthier' than clear
Monday, 15 Jan 2007 13:50
Apples contain beneficial antioxidants
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Cloudy apple juice is four times as healthy as clear, a new study has found.
Polish researchers studied the apple varieties Idared and Champion for their amounts of polyphenols, antioxidants which are thought to have anti-cancer properties and help against degenerative illnesses.
Polypenols can also be found in dark chocolate and red wine.
They found that cloudy juice contains four times the concentration of polyphenols.
As apple juice is clarified beneficial compounds in the pulp are removed.
Consumers are thought to buy clear apple juice more than cloudy due to the perception that it is purer, but this latest study, published in the Society of Chemical Industry's (SCI) Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, shows that they may be wrong.
"Health benefits are expected mainly in the case of cloudy apple juice consumption," the study's authors argue.
"The oxidative conditions of mash treatment and clarification, according to the common production practice for clear apple juice, considerably decrease the phenolic content in the product. However, in the case of cloudy apple juice the suppression of enzymatic browning conditions and the lack of clarification prevent the loss of polyphenols."
Cloudy juices from the Champion variety were found to be especially beneficial.