Do You Remember Your Last Apple?

Shea and his colleagues assessed whether consuming apple juice was protective against oxidative brain damage that results from normal metabolism, dietary insufficiencies or genetic deficiencies.

They exposed two groups of mice – normal adult mice, as well as mice that carry a gene associated with diseases like Alzheimer’s – to either a “complete” diet including known antioxidants, or a “deficient” diet that is thought to increase oxidative damage in the body. Some mice in each group also received apple juice concentrate in concentrations of 0.1, 0.5 or 1.0 percent in their drinking water.

After one month on the test diets, the animals were put through two different well-established maze tests to determine their memory and learning capabilities. Mice who consumed the diets augmented with apple juice tended to perform better on the maze tests, and all had less oxidative brain damage than the controls. In fact, the dietary addition of juice completely protected the normal mice from the oxidative stress caused by the deficient diet – and protected the genetically-deficient mice from both their genetic predisposition and the deficient diet, allowing them to perform at the same level as normal mice being fed the complete diet.

Although the UMass Lowell researchers did not study what components in apples were responsible for the neuroprotective effects demonstrated, they ruled out sugar and energy content, and suggested that the antioxidant potential of apple cider and apple juice was responsible.

“Our results suggest that something in apple cider and juice appears to protect the brain against oxidative damage, and improves cognitive performance in these animals, even when we impose dietary or genetic challenges,” said Dr. Shea. “We think that this ‘something’ is the apple’s naturally high level of antioxidants.

The results obtained were from moderate amounts of apple cider and juice – comparable to drinking approximately a couple good-sized glasses of them or eating a couple of apples a day. The findings also suggest that apple juice was most helpful in the framework of an overall healthy diet.