BOB DOUGHTY: His medical center also has a Facebook page, a MySpace page and a Twitter feed.

(MUSIC)

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: In the eighteen hundreds, the people of Wales advised, “Eat an apple on going to bed, and you will keep the doctor from earning his bread.” In the United States, you are more likely to hear that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” These sayings mean about the same thing. Red, green, or yellow…color is not important. People, and doctors, know that apples are good for you.

Now, a new report says that apples may even help you to live longer. The report was published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Scientists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong used fruit flies in their tests. These small insects have many of the same genes as humans. The scientists gave some of them a substance from apples called polyphenol antioxidants.

Fruit flies normally live about fifty days. But the ones with the apple chemical lived about fifty-five days. That is a ten percent increase in lifespan! The researchers also found that the polyphenol antioxidents helped the flies walk, climb, and move around better as they got older.

Workers inspect Golden Delicious apples for packing at the Rice Fruit Company in Gardners, Pennsylvania

BOB DOUGHTY: Apples also contain fiber, which helps with the processing of food in the body. One kind of fiber, called pectin, helps to prevent fat from building up in the blood. Studies have shown that women who ate apples often had from thirteen to twenty-two percent less chance of having heart disease.