an apple a day keeps the doctor away

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a popular English proverb advising that eating healthily and maintaining good nutrition prevents illness and reduces the need for medical care; the idiom originates in an 1866 Pembrokeshire (Welsh) proverb — eat an apple on going to bed, and you'll keep the doctor from earning his bread — and was first recorded in its modern form in 1913; the apple represents healthy eating habits, seasonal fruit, and the virtue of preventive health practice in contrast to curative medicine; the proverb encapsulates the preventive health philosophy that was central to nineteenth-century public health reform and to the emerging understanding that diet and lifestyle significantly determine health outcomes; in contemporary usage the phrase is often invoked to make a lighthearted point about preventive health, self-care, or the value of lifestyle choices in avoiding illness; nutritional research has partially validated the wisdom — apples contain quercetin, catechin, and other compounds with anti-inflammatory and cardioprotective effects