Granny Smith apples promote growth of friendly bacteria in the colon | Hacker News Reader

Granny Smith apples promote growth of friendly bacteria in the colon

news.wsu.edu

40 pointsclumsysmurf10 comments

What a surprise. A state university in a state in which apple-growing is a huge part of the state economy (Washington state in the United States) issues a press release saying that eating apples is good for you, according to an in-vitro (test tube, not living subject) study funded by a grant from the university and published in an obscure journal about food chemistry but not directly about human health.

Many, many submissions to HN are based at bottom on press releases, and press releases are well known for spinning preliminary research findings beyond all recognition. This has been commented on in the PhD comic "The Science News Cycle,"[1] which only exaggerates the process a very little. More serious commentary in the edited group blog post "Related by coincidence only? University and medical journal press releases versus journal articles"[2] points to the same danger of taking press releases (and news aggregator website articles based solely on press releases) too seriously. Press releases are usually misleading.

The most sure and certain finding of any preliminary study will be that more research is needed. For the press release kindly submitted today, the in vitro (test tube) finding has to be replicated in living human beings before it means much at all. Moreover, we would still have to check whether all the other effects of eating more apples, on balance, do more than contribute to having more intestinal gas. All too often, preliminary findings don't lead to further useful discoveries in science, because the preliminary findings are flawed. The obligatory link for any discussion of a report on a research result like the one kindly submitted here is the article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"[3] by Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific research. Check each news story you read for how many of the important issues in interpreting research are NOT discussed in the story.

[1] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174

[2] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/related-by-coi...

[3] http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

There are two kinds of studies I hate in the world of nutrition; this is one of them. This is the glorified ad study, where we look at a specific food item and a specific "good" trait and line them up. Once aligned, we let the marketers go to town because this food magically "solves" the problem (but we will still qualify with language like "may help" to prevent law suits).

Add an apple to your current obesigenic diet and you will still have an obesigenic diet. Replace some corn chips, bread or cake in your obesigenic diet with an apple, and you are a step closer to it not being obesigenic (but the same applies to kale, steak, and strawberries). Include apples as part of your whole foods, higher fat, lower sugar diet (aka healthy), and you will still have a whole foods, higher fat, lower sugar diet.

Nothing in the diet exists in isolation. You have to consider the whole diet.

Not disagreeing with you, but you have to consider the whole diet plus the gut microbiome. There's been a lot of focus on what we put into our bodies, we also need some focus on the organ that we weren't born with.

If I came off sounding like I don't appreciate the profound influence of our gut biota, I apologize. Gut science is a fascinating new field, and the only thing we really know is we really don't know much. :) So I totally agree with you; in fact, I'd say, when contemplating whole diet, you need to give as much consideration to your gut as you do yourself.

Well the mature Granny Smith tree in my garden has nearly given me diabetes from the amount of crumble and pie that it has blessed us with and ruined the liver of many thanks to the reliable yearly cider production (affectionately known as "badger's arse" in the household). But at least my colon has friendly bacteria...

Nutrition: YMMV.

yeah and the pound of sugar in each pie isn't to blame.

Yes precisely. I was hoping someone would reply with that.

The Granny Smith starts of as an acidic yellow ball of death, progresses through a window of being edible over the space of 2 days and then instantly turns into a rotten fermenting mushball suitable for cider only.

To get the things, you have to pick them early and check every day and add sugar to whatever you're cooking or they're inedible.

For reference, if you buy a Granny Smith in the shop and it's an eating apple, it's probably a hybrid and not a Granny Smith.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814614...

The "relevant" xkcd: http://xkcd.com/882/

I'm a big fan of Granny Smith apples and I ate them fairly often for a time as part of my efforts to get myself healthier. I think one of the problems with a study of this sort is that it measures but one dimension of what they do, and I think poorly at that. It measures one trait (amount of non-digestible material) they have and it's link to one outcome (fecal bacteria).

I think there is a lot more to it than that and I think they were beneficial to me because they have a complex set of traits that helped make them ideally suited to a kind of niche need. I am glad to see this, but it's just too one dimensional to draw much conclusion from.

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