Facts About Apple for Kids

Apple is a popular and healthy fruit. It is extremely nutritious and makes great healthy food for kids. Let’s delve a little deep into the world of apples!

Types of Apple

When you step into a grocery or a farmer’s market, you will probably find only a few types of apples there. Seven thousand five hundred types of apples are grown around the world. And there are around 2500 types of apples that grow in the United States. There are different colors of apples, and the fruits grow in reds, yellows, and greens.  When it comes to taste, all apples taste yummy. When you bite an apple, you will find some of them very sweet, and in contrast, some of them are pretty crunchy. 

The top five apple varieties in the US are:

1. Gala: These apples are reddish and have a sweet and mild taste. These make a great snack, so they are used as a salad topping and are also used to make delicious applesauce.
2. Red Delicious: As the name calls, these apples are a gorgeous red. They are sweet and mild in taste, and these apples are a great snacking item.  
3. Granny Smith: This is a green apple. Tangy in taste, these are great for baking.
4. Fuji: Fuji apples are a mix between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet apples. Fuji apples are shades of red mixed with a little yellow. They are sweet, and each bite is juicy. These apples also make a great snack. 
5. Honey Crisp: When you look at a Honey Crisp apple, you will see that these apples are a little yellow with shades of red. The bites are crisp. And these apples are good for baking.
6. Jonathan Apple: This variety of apples is closely related to the Esopus Spitzenburg apple. These apples are medium-sized, and you will find them tough but with smooth skin when you hold this apple. They have a mingled sweet and tarty taste. You can munch them fresh, or you can use them for cooking.
7. McIntosh: This apple variety is more popularly known as colloquially the Mac. This is the national apple of Canada. The fruit has a soft white pulp, has a tangy taste, and is red and green. 
8. Winesap: The origin of this variety of apples is unknown. This is an old variety that dates back to American colonial times. These apples are sweet with an acidic touch and make a great snack, so they are also used for cooking, especially for cider.
9. Pippin: These apples are yellow or greenish-yellow in color with strong shades of red.  They have a tangy taste and are used especially for cooking. 

What Does an Apple Look Like? 

Apples grow in different shades of reds, yellows, and greens. They grow to different sizes, and they have different tastes. The round-shaped fruit has a small stem, and the pulp of the fruit ranges from white to a flesh color.  The core is at the heart of the apple. The core holds five seed pockets, and each of these seed pockets carries a different number of seeds.

Where and How Does Apple Grow?

An apple tree bears apples – from the time of plantation, the tree takes eight long years to bear fruits, and these trees can live for 100 years. Today, apple trees grow in all the continents except Antarctica. The leading harvesters of apples are the United States of America, China, Iran, Turkey, France, and Poland. The United States is not the origin of apples. They were brought to the US by colonists from the 1700s. The colonists planted the first tree in Massachusetts. Apple trees now grow in all fifty states; however, more than half of the apples produced in the US come from Washington, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, and Virginia.

Apple trees thrive in areas where the summers are warm and the winters are moderately cold. You can have an orchard or grow a dwarf apple tree in your yard. The important thing to remember is that cross-pollination is necessary for producing apples. So, you will need to plant two different apple trees to produce apples.

Flowers blossom in apple trees every spring. The ovule is concealed inside the bottom of each flower. The seeds are inside the ovule, which will mature into an apple. The bees have a key role to play here. They pollinate the flowers and fertilize the seeds. The flowers turn brown and drop to the ground, and the apples start growing. This process takes around 4 to 5 months from the pollination to the harvest. 

Uses of Apple 

There are different ways of using the many varieties of apples. Here are a few uses:

• Dessert apples or table apples are often eaten raw and completely unprocessed. 
• In Europe, serving apples with pork and sausage is very common.
• Apples are enjoyed with honey at the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah to symbolize a sweet new year.
• Apple is an important ingredient in many desserts, such as apple cake, apple pie, apple crisp, and apple crumble.
• Farmers also cultivate certain types of apples for apple juice.
• You can add chopped apples to your bowl of oatmeal along with other fruits for a refreshing fruity breakfast.
• You can toss slices of dehydrated apples into your cereal or granola.
• Apples are often cooked, baked, or pickled in some meat dishes.
• Dried apples can be eaten as they are; they can also be macerated (soaked in water, other liquid, or alcohol).
• You can eat apples with other foods like nut butter or cheese, for snacks.

Nutrition Facts About Apple 

Apples are not only delicious but are incredibly healthy as well. Here are some nutritional facts about the fruit:

• Apples are highly nutritious fruits and provide the human body with important nutrients, vitamins, and minerals.
• They are loaded with carbohydrates, potassium, vitamin C. Each of these helps us to stay healthy.
• Apples are rich in flavonoids, which give them antioxidant properties.
• Apples are high in fiber. An average size apple is said to contain more fiber than a bowl of oatmeal.
• The skin of apples is extremely high in nutrition.
• However, avoid the seeds as they are toxic.
• Apples are free of cholesterol, fat, and sodium.
• The calorie content on each apple varies according to its size, usually ranging from around 50 to 100 calories.
• Apples comprise about 86% water.
• Apples have about 10 grams of sugar.

Some Other Interesting Facts and Information About Apple for Children 

Here are some interesting apple facts for preschoolers:

1. Each apple is hand-picked at the time of harvest.
2. Apples are a member of the rose family. Pears, plums, cherries, and peaches are all members of the rose family of plants.
3. Apples are 25% air, making them less dense than water and can thus float on water.
4. There is evidence that humans were consuming apples as far back as 6500 BC. 
5. Rockit apple is the smallest apple, while Hokuto apple is the largest.
6. It’s also said that Isaac Newton discovered the theory of gravity by seeing an apple fall from a tree.
7. John Chapman introduced apples to several states in America. Since then, he came to be popular as Johnny Appleseed.
8. Pomology refers to the study of apples. A person studying pomology is known as a pomologist.
9. The Guinness World Records registers the largest apple ever harvested weighed 4 pounds and 1 ounce. On October 24th, 2005, Chisato Iwasaki harvested it at his apple farm.

The above write-up thus puts up a detailed picture of the different sides of apples, and it paints an interesting side of an often-overlooked fruit.

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