Apples are a great afternoon snack to tide you over.

Apples are an all-American success story-each of us eats more than 19 pounds of them annually. Français : Les pommes sont célèbres en Amérique pour une alimentation équilibrée (8,6 kg annuellement). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How they slim: In a Brazilian study, eating an apple before a meal helped women lose 33 percent more weight than those who didn’t enjoy the crunchy snack.

That’s because apples’ soluble fiber slows the release of sugar into the bloodstream, enhancing feelings of satiety by up to 32 percent, so less food is eaten at meals.