Time to eat 100 million bacteria

“Apples juicy, Apples round,
 On the tree or on the ground, 
Apples crunchy, Apples sweet,
Apples are so good to eat

–  these lines from our primary grades are still  making our mouth watery… but are these lines correct? Are apples so good to eat? Probably. A new study published in Frontiers in Microbiology has revealed that apples are so good to eat since they carry bacteria, not in hundreds but in millions. More than 100 million! These numbers startle us, right.

Fruits are very beneficial for our health and the direct source to intake lucrative bacteria. In fruits, especially, Apples are among the most consumed fruit worldwide and an apple a day keeps the doctor away because it contains various flavonoids which is good for our health.

“83 million apples were grown in 2018, and production continues to rise,” says Professor Gabriele Berg from Graz University of Technology, Austria, one of the authors of the research.

The size of the fruit depends on the plant nutrition but now the fruits which are prepared by the conventional methods also look like the organic fruits. The yield which is prepared by the conventional method demand lots of water, which is why apples made from conventional methods are mostly juicy but tasteless. The researchers compared the conventional apples with the organic ones. 

“Putting together the averages for each apple component, we estimate a typical 240g apple contains roughly 100 million bacteria,” reports Prof Berg.  So, a whole apple contains approximately 100 million bacteria. But are these bacteria good for us?

Although, organic and conventional apples are having the same number of bacteria the researchers found organic apples have more diverse and beneficial bacterial community compare to conventional ones. Stem, peel, fruit pulp, seeds and calyx of apple fruit where bacteria reside in adequate amount but the majority of the bacteria are found in fruit pulp and seeds.

Escherichia Shigella – a group of bacteria that includes known pathogens – was found in most of the conventional apple samples, but none from organic apples. For beneficial Lactobacilli – of probiotic fame – the reverse was true.”, says Professor Berg. 

Journal source: Frontiers in Microbiology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2019.01629

Written by Kartikay Shukla

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