An apple a day doesn’t keep the doctor away – but eating apples may cut visits to pharmacists, a new study suggests. Researchers enrolled 8,399 adults who completed a dietary questionnaire.

Nine per cent typically ate at least one small apple (149g raw apple) per day. “Keeping the doctor away” was defined as no more than one visit to a doctor during the past year.

Overall, 39.0 per cent of apple eaters avoided visits to a doctor compared to 33.9 per cent of controls. Apple eating did not seem to influence overnight hospital stays.

After adjusting for confounders, the 19 per cent difference in attendance at the doctors was not significant but apple eaters were 27 per cent less likely than controls to need prescription medicines.

They also tended to be better educated and less likely to smoke – both factors associated with longer lifespans. “In the age of evidence-based assertions … there may be merit to the saying ‘An apple a day keeps the pharmacist away’,” the study concludes.

The authors suggest that “rigorously evaluating” other aphorisms, such as ‘Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise’ may “provide important answers for improving population health and reducing healthcare expenditures in the future”. (JAMA Intern Med doi:10.1001/jamainternmed. 2014.5466).