Eat an apple on going to bed...

The adage “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” is said to be an old saying from Pembrokeshire in Wales,” said Caroline Taggart, author of “An Apple a Day: Old-Fashioned Proverbs and Why They Still Work.”

The original phrase, Taggart said, was, ‘‘Eat an apple on going to bed, and you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.” In the 19th century and early 20th, the phrase evolved to “an apple a day, no doctor to pay” and “an apple a days sends the doctor away,” while the phrasing now commonly used was first recorded in 1922.

The popularity of the phrase has not been lost on modern science, either. Researchers and doctors have conducted numerous studies on the health benefits of apples — exploring whether they can actually reduce trips to the doctor.

In 2012, an Ohio State University study found that eating an apple a day helped significantly lower levels of bad cholesterol in middle-aged adults, and in 2011 a Dutch study found that eating apples and pears might help prevent strokes.