Stewed Apples – The perfect food for gut health?

You may have heard that bone broth and probiotics are great for gut health, but what about stewed apples?

They are a super simple, tasty, and very powerful way to reduce inflammation in our guts. As inflammation is at the heart of all gut issues, eating them regularly can help with IBS, IBD, bloating, pain and constipation.

One of the main reasons that apples support gut health is that they contain a bounty of polyphenols.

Polyphenols are naturally-occurring compounds found in in plants, including fruits, vegetables, coffee, tea, and wine. Once consumed, only about 5-10% of polyphenols are directly absorbed in the small intestine, while the rest make their way to the colon to be broken down by our gut bacteria into metabolites. In the colon, polyphenols act by enhancing the growth of beneficial bacteria and inhibiting the growth of pathogenic bacteria and yeast and also reduce inflammation in the gut.

Supplements are starting to emerge on the market that contain polyphenols for gut health (such ass Attrantil). But you can also get these same polyphenols from regularly consuming super foods like stewed apples or pears.

While stewed apples, can often be helpful in improving gut health and symptoms of digestive discomfort, they do contain types of sugar called FODMAPs and showed be avoided if you are following a Low FODMAP diet.

There are also some people who have a reactivity to apples, and this may be due to a cross reactivity with latex or birch pollen. If this sounds like you, you may want to switch to stewed pears instead.

The effect of stewed apples is that they increase ‘immune system tolerance’ which means they help the immune system react to things it should do (such as parasites) and not react to harmless things (such as foods).

We now understand how this improved tolerance seems to work, but I won’t go into too much detail here. If you want to take a deep dive into food sensitivities, you can read more here. Clinical Education also have an excellent pdf which goes into the science behind all of this.

Both cooked and raw apples are healthy. Raw apples provide fibre, Vitamin C, and Potassium, and may reduce cardio-vascular disease risk for example. But when apples are cooked, they also release extra pectin – a special form of fibre.

Pectin improves the environment of our guts, feeds important strains of bacteria, and studies in animals, have shown it to be anti-inflammatory.

Unless you have a problem with the texture of stewed apples with their skins left on, it is a good idea to include them. The skins contain more polyphenols, dietary fibre, and minerals compared to the other edible parts of the fruit.

Stewed apples can be eaten as dessert, a snack, or a meal substitute (no more than one substitution per day), and can be cooked in the evening and stored in the fridge to be eaten the next day.

Cinnamon can be added as it is anti-inflammatory and helps balance the blood sugar spike that is seen after eating apples.

A capsule of a probiotic such as Lactobacillus GG, Saccharomyces Boulardii, or Bifidobacteria can be opened and sprinked on top of the cooekd apples before serving to add some beneficial probiotic bacteria.