As documented here and elsewhere, heart disease is the leading cause of death in America. It is the reason why 654,000 Americans die annually in the United States and why millions more are diagnosed with it (26 million were diagnosed with heart disease in 2005, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention). And sadly, heart-related incidents have remained at the vanguard of the leading causes of death for decades.

The reason is sometimes genetically related; it seems we all know of someone whose family has a history of heart problems, if not our own. But it also derives from a lack of physical activity, a lack of healthy food choices (and we all know what things are healthy and aren’t, including those who file frivolous lawsuits against fast-food chains, claiming they didn’t know their food was unhealthy) and a lackadaisical attitude toward gaining that knowledge.

If only we could get back to the days where we learned the most basic, fundamental mores of life, such as the nursery rhyme “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Well, according to a study recently published in The Journal of Clinical Nutrition, we may want to take that advice a bit more seriously.

Apples—as well as dark chocolate, apricots, berries and bran—are chock full of flavonoids. No, flavonoids aren’t the latest breakfast cereal craze or a name astronauts have given to new signs of life on the planet Mars. What they are, rather, are natural compounds found in fruits, vegetables (and yes, even chocolate) and some grains that have high antioxidant value. But more to the point, these flavonoids appear to hold the antidote to reducing the risk of heart disease, particularly cardiovascular and coronary.

Now, as with any study, you want to be aware of what sample size is used (i.e. How many participated) and how long the study was in order to better gauge just how credible the results are. Here, it examined 34,000 women initially free of heart disease and documenting what they consumed from 1986 to 2002—clearly a large sample over an extended period of time.

The Iowan researchers discovered that those who ate foods with large amounts of flavones were at a significant advantage to not acquiring the killer disease when compared to those women who didn’t have any. And some foods were better than others at squelching specific heart disease-related illnesses. For instance, for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, strawberries and bran was particularly effective; for coronary heart disease, pears and grapefruit reduced the threat. The one food that was effective in reducing the threat of both heart-related illnesses? You guessed it—the apple!

Certainly more research needs to be done, particularly when this study was relegated to women and the leading cause for health-related deaths in men is heart disease (the same for women). But it is yet another promising finding of what Mother Nature—and Mother Goose—has to offer our families and ourselves: education and physical vitality.