Episode 26: An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

An apple a day keeps the doctor away is not folk wisdom, it is a rescue plan a dying industry launched in 1904, and the doctor part never held up when anyone actually checked. For most of American history the apple was not a snack, it was alcohol, and Johnny Appleseed's orchards were planted for drinking, not eating.

Then Prohibition came for cider and the apple's entire reputation needed a rebrand, so a Missouri fruit promoter stood up at the 1904 World's Fair and gave a Welsh proverb the marketing push of its life. In this episode: the boozy true history of the American apple, how a $20+ billion industry got built on a manufactured health halo, the 2015 JAMA Internal Medicine study that finally tested the slogan, and why the one apple that actually won me over is, ironically, the most engineered one on the shelf.