Once you take a bite of an apple, it’s best to eat it quickly. This fruit, like the banana or avocado, does not give the consumer much time before it oxidizes. Its shiny white pulp becomes brown and dry. Although rusty fruit can still get your teeth into it, it’s important to understand the changes that take place in it on an atomic scale. The changes that are observed in the fruits are not simply aesthetic, but certain important molecules for our health are altered.
The main substances that are altered by this oxidation process of the fruit are phenols. It is a group of bioactive compounds that have benefits on human health. However, when found in plants they serve to inactivate free radicals. These last substances cause damage to plant and animal cells and are found both in the atmosphere and in the human metabolism itself. To render these substances harmless, the phenols sacrifice themselves for the group and change part of their structure. This circumstance makes its benefits to human health less.
