Cloudy apple juice is better for you than clear varieties, say researchers. Polish scientists found the levels of antioxidants which protect against heart disease and cancer are almost double in cloudy apple juice. The study published in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.
Clear and cloudy apple juices from Idared and Champion varieties were studied for their radical-scavenging effects. The polyphenolic content and composition of the juices before and after thiolysis were determined by high-performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection. Cloudy juices, especially that prepared from Champion variety, had a higher content of procyanidins than clear juices.
The antioxidant properties of apple juices were much better reproduced by EPR spectroscopy than by UV-visible measurements. The former method is especially sensitive to the concentration of polymerised or bound procyanidins, whilst the latter method requires transparent (clear) samples. Apple juices, especially cloudy ones, are a rich source of natural antioxidants that may be used in the pharmaceutical or food industry.
The researchers at the Agricultural University of Wroclaw measured the amount of procyanidins, the main compounds containing polyphenols in apples, in two varieties of clear and cloudy apple juices. Cloudy apple juice, which contains more pulp, was found to have higher concentrations of antioxidants and showed more antioxidant activity in experiments.
Don’t forget that eating apples offers more health benefits than drinking apple juice as you also get the fibre in apples.