Beauty-enhancing and nourishing, it can also clear heat and detoxify - how should you eat foods that fight acne and fade spots?

Do you like eating bitter melon? Eating bitter melon has many benefits. Bitter melon originated in the East Indies and is widely cultivated in tropical to temperate regions around the world. It is commonly cultivated in both northern and southern China. The fruit of bitter melon tastes sweet and bitter; it is mainly used as a vegetable and can also be candied; the ripe flesh and aril are also edible. Regularly eating bitter melon can enhance the vitality of the skin layer and make the skin delicate and healthy. Fresh bitter melon pounded into juice or decocted as soup is a good auxiliary dietary remedy for liver-fire red eyes, stomach duct pain, and damp-heat dysentery; fresh bitter melon pounded and applied externally can treat carbuncles and boils; in summer, children are prone to prickly heat, and rubbing slices of bitter melon on the prickly heat on the body can help it heal sooner; bitter melon boiled in water or prepared as a dish can dissipate heat and relieve summerheat.

Clam meat and bitter melon soup is a top-grade dish for lowering blood sugar. The crude extract of bitter melon contains substances similar to insulin and has an obvious blood sugar-lowering effect. Traditional Chinese medicine holds that bitter melon is sweet and bitter in flavor, cold and cooling in nature, and can clear heat, relieve restlessness, and quench thirst; clam meat is sweet and salty and cold, and can clear heat and nourish yin, quench thirst, and promote urination. Used together, they clear heat and nourish yin, and are suitable for people with diabetes who tend toward stomach yin deficiency with heat.

Bitter melon can dispel pent-up heat in the heart and remove toxins from the body. The best way to eat bitter melon is still as a cold dressed salad. Cold dressing can preserve the vitamins contained in bitter melon very well. If it is stir-fried plainly, these vitamins will be lost in large amounts during the stir-frying process, and after plain stir-frying the oil content is relatively high, so people will take in more grease after eating it and it cannot play the role of cooling and reducing internal heat. Bitter melon tastes bitter; eaten raw it is cold in nature, and cooked it is warm in nature. Eaten raw, it clears summerheat and purges fire, and relieves heat and restlessness; eaten cooked, it nourishes blood and benefits the liver, moistens the spleen and tonifies the kidney, and can remove pathogenic heat, relieve fatigue, clear the heart and brighten the eyes, boost qi and strengthen yang. But when eating bitter melon, attention should also be paid not to damage the qi of the spleen and lungs. Although the summer weather is hot, people should not eat too much bitter-flavored food, and it is best to pair it with pungent-flavored foods (such as chili, pepper, scallion, and garlic); this can avoid bitter flavor entering the heart and helps tonify lung qi.

The main ingredients are bitter melon and pork. These ingredients contain protein components and a large amount of vitamin C, which can improve the body's immune function and enable immune cells to kill cancer cells; among them, bitter melon juice contains a certain protein component that can strengthen macrophage capacity and is clinically effective against lymphosarcoma and leukemia; the trypsin preparation extracted from bitter melon seeds can inhibit the protease secreted by cancer cells and prevent the growth of malignant tumors. Cut bitter melon into 4 cm sections, remove the pulp, cook in cold water to remove the bitter taste, then squeeze out the water; mince the pork, cut the shiitake mushrooms and shrimp into small pieces and put them in a bowl, add egg, flour, and refined salt and mix evenly into a filling, stuff it into the bitter melon sections, and seal both ends with 50 g of wet starch. (Shiitake mushrooms should be soaked in advance; the filling is best minced with a meat grinder, otherwise chopping the filling should be done with sufficient effort and chopped relatively fine. The mixing method is generally a combination of stirring and tossing, stirring more, and the filling must fully become sticky before stuffing, so that the texture turns out crisp and tender.) For bitter melon stuffed with meat, heat cooked lard (peanut oil is also fine) to 60 percent hot (about 180 degrees), add garlic cloves and fry briefly, then remove; put the bitter melon into the pot, and when the surface of the bitter melon is fried to a light yellow color, remove it and place it upright in a bowl, sprinkle with garlic cloves, add soy sauce, and steam in a steamer until cooked; heat 50 g of cooked lard to 60 percent hot, add the aromatics (generally, the aromatics for bitter melon are best paired with fermented black beans), pour the original juice from steaming the bitter melon into the pot and bring to a boil, add an appropriate amount of monosodium glutamate and 25 g of wet starch to thicken the sauce, invert the bitter melon onto a plate and pour the sauce over it, sprinkle with pepper powder, and drizzle with sesame oil.

Bitter melon with wood ear is a dish made with bitter melon, wood ear, and other main ingredients, and belongs to home-style cooking. The charantin and bitter principles in bitter melon can increase appetite and strengthen the spleen and open the stomach; the alkaloid quinine it contains has the effects of promoting urination and invigorating blood, reducing inflammation and reducing fever, and clearing the heart and brightening the eyes; wash the bitter melon, remove the seeds, and slice it; soak the wood ear until rehydrated and tear it apart; set a pot on the stove, add oil, stir-fry the bitter melon, and add a little salt; then add the wood ear; stir-fry the wood ear and bitter melon together; finally add an appropriate amount of water and stir-fry until cooked.

Scrambled eggs with bitter melon is a very ordinary home-style dish. Although it tastes slightly bitter, it has high nutritional value and is a widely circulated home-style dish. The main ingredients are bitter melon and eggs. Preparation method: take two eggs and beat them evenly in a large bowl; take one bitter melon, wash it, and cut it into small pieces; a little salt and oil. Dried golden hook shrimp; pour the cut bitter melon pieces into the beaten eggs, add a little salt, and mix well; pour oil into the pot and heat it, fry the dried golden hook shrimp until fragrant, then pour all the mixed bitter melon and egg into the pot and quickly stir-fry for a few minutes until the fragrance is smelled. Before taking it out of the pot, taste for saltiness; if not salty enough, add an appropriate amount of salt. Plate and remove from the pot.

Bitter melon omelette is a traditional famous dish of Guangdong Province and belongs to the Cantonese cuisine system. Bitter melon clears heat and relieves summerheat, reduces swelling and detoxifies, and is an essential summerheat-relieving dish in summer. Bitter melon omelette can not only reduce the impact of the bitterness in bitter melon on the taste buds, but when combined with eggs, it also has a distinctive flavor. Cut the bitter melon in half, remove the core, and cut into thin slices; beat the eggs. Pour an appropriate amount of oil into the pot, first stir-fry the eggs, then take them out and set aside after frying. Pour an appropriate amount of oil into the pot again, put in the bitter melon and stir-fry; when almost ready to come out of the pot, pour in the fried eggs, season with salt and monosodium glutamate, and then it can be taken out of the pot.