Four apples that look alike, but they’re four different varieties – and they taste different.

When people say “I don’t really like apples” my reaction is that there are dozens of varieties, how many have they really tried?

The four varieties here – Evercrisp, Koru, Ruby Frost, and Snap Dragon, are all grown in New York State.  Disclosure: These apples were provided by Yes! Apples. They did not ask me to write this and I’m wearing both my food-critic/foodie hat and my nutritionist hat, so here goes.

Since they looked pretty similar, I expected them to taste fairly similar.  Au contraire.  The only commonality: crispness.  Nothing mushy here. 

Overall, these were four outstanding apple varieties, none of which I’d tasted before.  Quick review of each:

Evercrisp: More like “supercrisp”—solid, firm and with an intense, flavor, almost like apple extract had been added to it.  To be fair, the Evercrisp I tasted also had a “sugar core” — that almost clear, icy-looking appearance in the flesh that signifies a concentration of natural sweetness.  Any apple can have this, and I was the lucky taster here.

Koru: I’ve written about this apple before – when I first tasted it at the New York Produce Show.  Sweet, tart but not astringent, and the smaller core gives you a little more edible portion – and less to waste.  All good by me.

Ruby Frost: A good snap when biting into it, this one seemed to have more wine notes to it.  I’m no wine connoisseur, but I’d say it was more Riesling than burgundy, perhaps due to the sweetness.  I see this one as a sophisticated apple, if you can imagine such a thing. 

Snap Dragon:  This one was sweet and tart and almost like it was injected with extra apple flavor.  Take apple juice and heat it like you’re reducing it just a bit to concentrate the flavor.    

For me, the Evercrisp wins by a hair, but I’d eat each one of these again in a heartbeat.  I don’t like all apples.  Give me a Rome apple and it’ll sit there until I die.  They’re just not an eating apple.  Both Red and Golden delicious are OK, but apples that are crisp, tart and sweet win me over.  On the other hand, if I see any of the four varieties noted above in my local market, I’m grabbing them, and don’t get in my way.

An Apple A Day? Make It 2 & Lower Your Cholesterol

Speaking of heartbeats, there’s a new study out on the bennies of eating 2 apples a day.  All subjects were borderline overweight, with BMIs just over 25, and had mildly elevated cholesterol levels.  Two groups, eating either two whole apples a day (about 12 ounces of edible apple, with skin but without the core) or a control group drinking the same number of calories as apple juice, for 8 weeks.  Then there was a 4-week “washout period” and each group traded interventions.  That is, the apple eaters now got the juice and the hjuice drinkers now had the apples.

When the whole apples were eaten, total cholesterol and LDL-cholesterol (the “bad” one) declined significantly, not a huge drop, but about 5 percent each.  That’s ain’t shabby, for just eating more fruit. 

It’s not clear if the difference happened because of the apples’ high content of pro-anthocyanidins (antioxidant compounds in the skins of apples) or because the whole apple also has loads of good prebiotic fiber, or some combination of those two factors.  That’s for the scientists to figure out in additional research.  Consumers (and those of us who eat) just need to know that eating apples may help steer your health in a good direction. 

Wearing my registered dietitian-nutritionist hat, I also like that eating apples — or any fruit — more often, is likely to squeeze out some of the less nutritious foods you might otherwise have eaten.  It’s not just about eating a great food, it’s about using it to replace a not-so-great food.

A few caveats here: Most people don’t want to commit to eating two apples a day forever.  I wouldn’t either.  And this study used a single variety of apple, called “Renetta Canada”, like those pictured here, so the proanthocyanidin content could be consistent.  That said, most apples are good sources of these compounds, whether you eat them with the skin (personal favorite) or without. 

Cut-To-The-Chase Take-away

Most people need to eat more fruits and veggies anyway, so just count this latest study as more ammunition in favor of doing so.  Eat whatever fruits you like but eat them DAILY!  And mix it up whenever possible – they all have their diverse benefits – and flavors!