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(Below is an excerpt from a lecture at UVM School of Medicine, 2020)
Preface:
Alcohol is not a healthy thing -- you know that, I know that -- so let’s start there. The fact is, frequent consumption of alcohol in medium amounts or as occasional binge drinking (large doses) can damage the liver, harm the kidneys and pancreas, destroy gut health, weaken the immune system, and can contribute to mental illness… so , YES, alcohol is dangerous! Let it be known that I think alcohol is not good for you.
But, alcohol can also be a beneficial thing in many circumstances. There’s a window in which it can play a positive roll in human health and in society if the negative impacts of alcohol can be contained. Alcohol is known to temporarily relax people in times immediate grief or stress (“Line ‘em up, Sam”), it can help in society-building, both on the local and macro scale (as in the Irish Pub or Greek symposium), and it can inspire creativity (as in everything Hemingway or Fitzgerald ever wrote.) I’m just saying… alcohol has it’s place.
And then there’s “the French argument”, which defends daily red wine consumption as specifically good for your health. They claim it’s the main reason they, as a nation, have lower heart problems than most. They say the grape’s natural phytonutrients lay waiting in an old bottle of wine just as they would in the fresh fruit itself. And when these phytonutrients (which are specific only to wine grapes not table grapes) are passed to the human body they help attack “bad cholesterol” in the blood.
I’m not going to restate the French argument but you can read the common explanations and research on phytoalexins, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoalexin), and specifically resveratrol, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol) to see why many people think that if a plant has a strong immune response then that beneficial quality is then transferred to humans after we consume the plant’s fruit. Likewise, you can also see the logic in the argument that if a plant has a weak immune defense (genetic), or if the plant’s immune system is repressed or controlled by human intervention (environmental), then the nutritional value of that plant will be reduced for humans.
The pivotal condition for all of this is the plant’s immune response, a form of natural intelligence which has systematically been breed out of cultivated plants over the past 150 years (except some wine fruits), and this is why it’s absolutely crucial cider detached itself from existing apple farms and the predominant cultivation methods.
Summary Statement:
Factoring the above pro-alcohol arguments I still say, “alcohol ain’t good for you” but I will argue (as I tried to do at UVM) that if cider fruit is grown correctly*, the fermented drink has the potential to be the healthiest of all common forms of alcohol -- healthier than even French red wines!
I think this because (1) real cider has less alcohol than it’s only other healthy rival, red wine; but also (2), if the right apples were selected (genetic varieties), and (3) if they were grown the right way (such as wild-simulated, or as I call it, “uncultivation”), then these particular “cider-apples” will express all the properties that the French espouse in their grapes, and maybe more. These apples (which, I'm sorry to tell you, are all but absent in 99.999% of all the cider made in America) deliver infinitely greater sums of tannin and polyphenols, more nutrients and phytonutrients (like anti-oxidants), and more beneficial acids and minerals (like Vitamin C and Vitamin E.) In short, they are the exact opposite of the kinds of apples grown on modern apple farms and purchased in stores.
Plus, if the person making the cider does not** add sulfites, sorbate, sugars, commercial yeast strains (which are also cultured on GMO corn), or run the juice through sterile-filter (stripping out whatever nutrients were left), then the finished drink can potentially remain health-positive despite the presence of alcohol. (Note that I’m talking about fully fermented ciders. Ciders with partial sweetness, or ciders that are chapitalized with foreign sweeteners, produce a hypoglycemic effect, disrupting the body’s transfer of energy and mental function, and are likely a source of “wine headaches.”)
Ultimately, I will show that when cider-farming focuses on the health of the fruit first (it’s nutritional capabilities, not the superficial health of the tree) then the cider from those apples will switch from being health-negative to health-positive. But interestingly, I will also show that a happy consequence of that switch is the monumentally better taste the cider has. Or said concisely: Cider’s taste and health potentials are intertwined.
This is all but absent in modern cider and apple farming given that customer patronage is what governs agriculture (all of agriculture, not just of apples.) Customers need to understand the full scope of cultivation options and farmers need to fully disclose their particular practices, neither of which happen beyond the surface level. Later, I will detail the obstacles we face when trying to reverse the trajectory of unhealthy cultivation, including transparency and customer participation.
The above graph was published in 2013 by the NY Times as apart of Jo Robinson's article, "Breeding the Nutrition Out of Food." The notes in black are clarifications I made to illustrate the trajectory of apple agriculture.
Note about this essay: It's currently about 20 pages long but I consider it a "start." Last winter while preparing my talk at UVM Medical Center I realized it would take volumes to bring consumers up to speed on what's going on in apple farming and cider making. Even among apple farming professionals this understanding is almost completely absent (they either except the wisdom of progressivism or they don't feel it's possible to turn back now.)
Rather than posting this paper all at once I’m going to post it in installments or, if you can link me to the right agent, I’d be happy to craft it for the appropriate publication. This is all to be continued…
