Bottle gourd 瓠瓜 （ hù guā ）
Classification: Cucurbita
Calories: 15kcal/100g
Nutritional Value: Reduce blood sugar、Enhance physical fitness
Not Suitable for: Patients with spleen and stomach deficiency and cold
Introduction: Bottle gourd is an annual climbing herbaceous plant.The stems and branches have grooves and are covered with long, sticky, and soft hairs.The leaf stalks are slender.The plant produces multiple fruits, which resemble bottle gourds but are smaller, measuring only about 10 centimeters in length.The seeds are white in color, inverted-ovate or triangular in shape, with a truncated or 2-toothed apex, or occasionally round, and approximately 20 millimeters long.It flowers in the summer and bears fruit in the autumn.Bottle gourd is nutritionally rich, containing various amino acids, vitamins, and trace elements.When harvested young, the flesh of the gourd is fine, white, tender, fragrant, and delicious, making it highly favored by consumers.Bottle gourd also has cooling, diuretic, laxative, and tonifying effects. It can be used to treat painful ulcers on the oral and nasal mucous membranes.Bottle gourd contains a significant amount of vitamin C, which promotes antibody synthesis and enhances the body’s antiviral capabilities.Two pancreatic protease inhibitors can be extracted from bottle gourd, which inhibit pancreatic proteases and therefore have a blood sugar-lowering effect.