I don't know if this is the appropriate place to post this but the following appeared in the Oregonian Foodday section of Tuesday, March 3, 2009 (p. FD2):
Maze Challenged? Drink Apple Juice
Our health file is always bulging with new studies. But we immediately honed in on this one because who doesn't like apple juice? A study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease showed that drinking apple juice helped mice perform better in mazes and prevented the decline in performance otherwise seen in aging. The research team from the University of Massachusetts demonstrated that mice receiving the human equivalent of two glasses of apple juice per day for one month produced less of a small protein fragment called beta-amyloid that is responsible for forming the "senile plaques" commonly found in the brains of people suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Attached was a picture of an apple and one-half, and a large glass of apple juice. The picture's caption was: "To reduce your risk of Alzheimer's (or getting stuck in mazes), researchers say drinking two glasses of apple juice a day may help."
As a personal observation, the more time one spends in one's orchard and garden and thereby away from the rat race, the more sane they will remain. And now there seems to be credible scientific research the eating one's orchard bounty is actually good for you too.
and if you make your own juice/cider, it will have all of the antioxidants, which in an apple is a considerable amount. Tragically, all consumer sold juice is required to be boiled, thereby destroying much of its vitamin C and antioxidants. Therefore, the best juice you can make is the juice you make out of berries or fruit you grow. It can also be organic and inexpensive. Imagine that. I make several different juices from berries and fruit and I had to change the recipes/mixes to find the right flavor, but they are worth so much more than store-bought, boiled juice. Some berries don't taste that great by themselves (mountain ash, aronia, flowering quince fruit, highbush cranberry), but can be quite good in mixes.
John S
PDX OR
For well over a decade I’ve ground and pressed my excess apples and pears into juice. Too lazy to make Cider, I’ll refrigerate it and drink it non-stop while giving it away to neighbors and friends. With ‘runs’ averaging 20 gallons – all I request is my jug back (rinsed and ready).
Raised on ‘stuff like that,’ my Father and self have only presumed it’s better than ‘store-bought.’ What’s also nice is that my kids would/will freely drink it … generally - if it’s ‘good for you’ - it’s a struggle to get it down them. Helping at a school party (years ago) my then kindergartner was offered a cup of “Apple Juice,†poured from a fancy store-bought plastic jug. She nearly spit it out! She told me “It was supposed to be apple juice.†…I had to explain that she’d never had ‘juice like that’ <!-- s
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Passing off the good-stuff around school I was making instant friends! Some wanted to buy it; I told them I couldn’t legally sell it, so they’d have to keep taking it for free. With 4 or 5 pressings per ‘season,’ beginning with my Gravensteins, they now like to ‘guess’ when the pears are added. I’d always thought of pears as very related to apples, but pears are so dense they sink. Their pulp is also heavy and dense but their juice is nectar!
My Father would boil vats of apple juice then fill and cap gallon jars he’d hustle from a local recycling depot in Portland – green gallon wine jugs from the 70’s – of which I still use. Did need to buy new caps that sealed, but the ‘cooked juice’ is not the same… which, as mentioned above, is the way it must be stored and sold at grocery stores. At the time, we only had a small lot in Portland, without any fruit trees. But Dad would keep his eyes open for loaded trees as he’d drive out to the local rivers fishing; ask the owner’s if he could pick the apples then get together with my Uncle to do a mass pressing. He’d occasionally drop off a steelhead (fish) or some processed juice to the tree owners… which generally assured him a yearly supply!
Admittedly, my press wasn’t cheap; but after scurrying around the hills looking at used (junk) presses… I finally sprung for one. I realize old homestead’s and their massive fruit trees are disappearing, but I suspect the youth of today could do something very much like my dad did. We/he also hustled walnuts; picked wild black berries (for days); wild blueberries from the foothills of the Cascades; found an abandoned peach orchard near the Willamette River (my favorite!); harvested an overgrown homestead orchard along Johnson Creek; would drive out to neglected one-time ‘prune’ orchards in Yamhill County… Dad hates waste – me too! And a great way for me to stop ‘wasting’ my abundance of fruit was making juice 
Hey – my Dad’s Eighty today! March 16 - and maybe it’s been all that fruit, but my daughter had just described ‘Grandpaw’ as “Being young for 80!†“He’s in good shape, he does a lot of things and he’s smart!†Happy Birthday Dad – it must be the Juice!
Idyllwild
simplepress
jafar
Marsha H
Viron
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