Can gourds be eaten raw? These things to note when eating gourds raw

Gourds cannot be eaten raw; eating them raw will cause diarrhea. They are likely to cause indigestion, so you can taste them, but do not eat much. It is recommended to drink more water to promote metabolism and aid digestion.

Gourds actually have many ways of being eaten. Wang Zhen's Agricultural Book from the Yuan Dynasty says: “The bottle gourd has a very wide range of uses; the large ones can be boiled into a vegetarian soup, can be cooked with meat into a meat soup, can be fried with honey into a sweet treat, and can be sliced into strips and dried……” It also says: “The bottle gourd as a thing grows in abundance, and eating it is inexhaustible; it is suitable for all kinds of cooking and is the finest vegetable.” It can be seen that the ancients used gourds as melons, fruits, and vegetables for food, and the ways of eating them were many and varied: they could be boiled into soup, made into dishes, pickled, or dried in the sun. When boiled into soup, a light fragrance drifts all around, and its flavor is delicious. What makes it different from other melons and fruits is that, whether it is the gourd or its leaves, both must be eaten while tender; otherwise, once mature, they lose their value as food.

The gourd has a long history in our country; among the oracle bone inscriptions unearthed so far, there are records about gourds. In ancient classics, what appears is not "hulu" but terms such as "hu" and "pao". And in our country's famous myth story "The Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea," the tool used by Iron Crutch Li to cross the sea was a gourd. It can be seen that the gourd has existed in our country for a long time.