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 | | | | | How About Them Apples? | | | Can three apples a day melt pounds away? Our columnist investigates the Wenatchee weight-loss plan | |
| | | Dec. 2 — On any other day, I would have ignored this wholly unsolicited email:
“Hi Gersh,” it began (presumptuously, considering that I have earned the title “Mr. Gersh,” thank you very much). “Forgive the completely unsolicited [email], but I have a story on 346 people in tiny Wenatchee, Washington [who] lost more than 6,000 pounds of fat in 12 weeks by [eating] an apple before every meal. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true.” | |
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SURE, IT SOUNDED weird, but as unsolicited emails go, this one was certainly better than the usual letters I get from ex-Nigerian finance ministers offering me $70 million in unmarked bills in exchange for just a few thousand dollars upfront.
And given that this apple-themed missive e-rrived during the week of Thanksgiving—the day when our country engages in an orgy of consumption so wanton that butter is considered a vegetable—I simply could not ignore it. And I tried, believe me.
But every time I attempted to focus my attention on that extra drumstick, the image kept coming back to me of those 346 people in that Central Washington town, melting off excess poundage by chomping on apples. When I started tucking into that extra slice of pecan pie, I remembered that nearly 70 percent of the country is now considered overweight and that obesity will soon put as great a strain on our health-care system as it was putting on all the folding chairs at the kids’ end of my brother’s Thanksgiving table.
The battle of the bulge is being lost in this country. It’s getting so bad, in fact, that when I picked up a copy of The Onion the other day, I couldn’t tell whether its front-page article—”Area Man’s Recommended Daily Caloric Intake Exceeded By 9 A.M.”—was an indication that the paper had abandoned satire for actual news coverage.
Eve seduced Adam with a red apple. Now, I, too, was falling under the power of the crispy, tart temptation. But so what? I figured that if I wrote about the apple diet, I could do something that is rarely done in my business: actually write an article that could help people. The Pulitzer committee might revoke my press pass for it, but, darn it, I want to do something positive for a change. The people of Wenatchee were calling out to me. So I started calling them.
“I lost 22 pounds and my husband lost 74 pounds in 12 weeks,” said Tammy Harn, an insurance claims adjuster. “It’s all because of the apples. Sure, I used to eat them every once in a while, but now I eat one before every meal. And I always keep apples in the car.”
Fellow apple-diet-adherent Bonnie Fortner doesn’t have to bother. She walks right out her front door and into an orchard. “I pick them right off the tree,” said Fortner, who also lost 22 pounds. “Wenatchee is the apple capital of the world, you know.”
I hadn’t known, but I was starting to get the picture. After all, the so-called Apple Diet was devised by a nutritionist working at the Wenatchee branch of Gold’s Gym. Could it be that the nutritionist was simply responding to her environment? Perhaps, if she’d been living in Idaho, I’d be writing about the Potato Diet or if she was from Boston, suddenly she’d be pushing those really fatty baked beans as the new weight-loss sensation.
“First of all, it’s not a diet, it’s a plan,” the nutritionist, Tammy Flynn, told me. “And second of all, this has nothing to do with me being in Wenatchee. It happened because I noticed that people who ate apples before meals lost more weight than the people who didn’t. And they stuck with it because apples are sweet and crunchy. People love the crunch. Food today is so over-processed that it’s practically pre-chewed.”
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Flynn was onto something. But something still bothered me about this three-apple-a-day diet. I mean, we all know that one apple, consumed every 24-hour period, can keep a physician at bay. And it’s not as if the apple’s miraculous dietetic qualities are just now becoming known. After all, back in 1987, the Washington Apple Commission—the very same organization that sent me the aforementioned unsolicited email—put out a press release touting the apple as the ultimate diet food.
At the time, the typical American (a 43-year-old white guy who lives in Russell, Kansas but could not be reached for comment) consumed 22 pounds of apples a year. But now, thanks to fast food, fried foods, processed foods, non-foods and junk food, the average American eats just 19 pounds of apples a year—whether it’s Fujis, Macs, Empires, Jonagolds or Red Delicious (which are neither red nor delicious).
Those lost three pounds of annual chomping translate into billions of uneaten apples every year. So, could it be that the Apple Commission was trotting out the apple diet again to put some juice in its sales? After all, three apples a day would add up to more than 350 pounds of apples a year—a nearly 2,000-percent increase.
“This is not about just selling apples,” said Tricia Belcastro, a spokeswoman for the commission. “This is about a diet that’s easy to follow and healthy for you. Did you know that there are five grams of fiber in every apple? [I did.] And there are enzymes in apples that help you digest your food? [I had a vague sense.] A lot of diets are difficult to stay on, but all you have to do with this diet is keep a lot of apples around. And everyone loves apples!”
I suggested that the banana is a far-more-popular fruit, but Belcastro disagreed.
“Come on, it’s no contest,” said Belcastro, who claimed to have brought a 42-pound case of Fuji apples from Washington to her parents’ home in Ohio for the Thanksgiving weekend. “An apple is totally portable. You can keep one in your purse at all times. You throw a banana in a backpack and it’s mush!”
Belcastro was making a compelling argument, but there was half of an apple pie in the fridge. That’s on the diet, right?
Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post who likes apples and bananas. His website is at www.gersh.tv
© 2002 Newsweek, Inc.
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