Ash Gourd

Ash gourd is also called as the winter melon, also called white gourd. It is a vinegrown for its very large fruit, eaten as a vegetable. The fruit is fuzzy when young. By maturity, the fruit loses its hairs and develops a waxy coating, giving rise to the name wax gourd, and providing a long shelf life. The melon may grow as large as 80cm in length. Ash gourd is a nutritive, annual, hairy climbing herb. It is an ash colored, large fruit vegetable like pumpkin. It is also known as white gourd or wax gourd. It consists of substantial amount of moisture.

Edible Part:  Large fruit

Chemical content: The seeds contain pale yellow oil.

Nutrivitive value: protein, fat, fiber and carbohydrates. Its mineral and vitamin contents are calcium, iron, phosphorus, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin and vitamin C.

Benefits:

• The dilute juice of ash gourd is useful in the treatment of peptic ulcer.
• It helps to relieve the inflammation in the alimentary canal.
• The peel and seeds of ash gourd, boiled in coconut oil are useful in hair growth; prevent dandruff and dryness of the scalp.
• It acts as a blood coagulant. From ancient times, its fresh juice mixed with a teaspoon of gooseberry or lime juice is used as a specific medicine to stop profuse bleeding from lungs and presence of blood cells in the urine.
• It increases the output of urine and washes out waste products from the body.
  

Brinjal

Brinjal is otherwise called as eggplant/aubergine. The plant is native to India. It is a delicate perennial but often cultivated as an annual. It grows 40 to 150 cm tall.It contains small numerous soft seeds which is slightly bitter in taste.

Edible part: Fruit.

Chemical Content: Nicotinoid alkaloids.

Nutritive value: It is rich in Vitamin A and Vitamin B

Benefits:

• Take brinjal in a mashed form or as a soup and add some garlic and asafetida to it. It will help you to get rid of flatulence
• Brinjal can also be eaten after being roasted directly on fire. Just peel off the skin, mash it and add some salt in it for flavor and eat it. It will help cure phlegm, congestion and reduce the formation of gas.
• In order to increase appetite and digestion, take soup made of mashed brinjal and tomato, along with some salt and pepper.
• In case you are unable to fall asleep easily, eat a soft brinjal (along with some honey) after baking it directly over fire. If taken regularly, it may also cure insomnia.
• In order to cure enlarged spleen caused due to malaria, eat soft baked brinjal along with raw sugar on empty stomach, preferably in the morning.

Bottle Gourd

Benefits:

• The juice of bottle gourd is a valuable medicine for excessive thirst due to severe diarrhea, diabetes and excessive use of fatty or fried foods.
• The Gourd fruit juice is used in the treatment of epilepsy and other nervous diseases, stomach acidity, indigestion and ulcers and other urinary disorders.
• Fibre helps in preventing constipation and other digestive disorders like flatulence and piles.
• Bottle gourd helps to lose weight and in overcoming jaundice.

Bitter Gourd

Benefits:

• Bitter gourd juice is highly beneficially for treating blood disorders like blood boils and itching.
• Bitter melon contains a hypoglycemic compound (a plant insulin) that is highly beneficial in lowering sugar levels in blood and urine.
• The high beta-carotene and other properties in bitter gourd makes it one of the finest vegetable fruit that helps to  alleviate eye problems and improves  the eye sight.
• The bitter juice can also help to build your immune system and increase your body’s resistance against infection.
• Regular consumption of the bitter juice has also been known to improve psoriasis condition and other fungal infections like ring worm and atheletes foot and when mixed with honey, it helps to control asthma, bronchitis and pharyngitis.

Cabbage

The Cabbage is  used as a leafy green vegetable. It is a herbaceous biennial vegetable with a short stem upon which is crowded a mass of leaves, usually green but in some varieties red or purplish while immature form a characteristic compact, globular cluster head (Cabbage head)

Edible part: Cabbage Leaves.

Chemical Content: Riboflavin

Nutritive Value: Cabbage is rich in Iodine, Vitamin E, lactic acid.

Benefits:

• It helps in proper functioning of the brain and the nervous system.
• It is an excellent source for treating the neurotic disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.
• Cabbage juice from the stem is a good remedy for the ulcers, headache, asthma, bronchitis and other digestion problems.

Cauliflower

Cauliflower is an annual plant that reproduces the seed. Typically, only the head is eaten while the stalk and surrounding thick, green leaves are the parts of the vegetable broth or discarded.

Edible part: Flower

Chemical content: Folate

Nutritive value: Vitamin C

Benefits:

• It can improve heart health and reduce the risk of strokes
• It helps to strengthen the immune system.
• Cauliflower can also help to maintain a healthy cholesterol level.
• It is often recommended that women who are pregnant or may become pregnant eat significant amounts of cauliflower in order to help their unborn children develop properly.
• Cauliflower is an excellent source of fiber, which helps to improve colon health and can even help prevent cancer.

Carrot

• Helps prevent night blindness.
• Enhance the quality of breast milk.
• Improves the appearance of the skin, hair and nails.
• When taken daily it can lower cholesterol and blood pressure
• Regulates Blood sugar.

Raw carrots are eaten in salads and are mixed with some viands.

Coriander

Edible Part: all parts of the plant

Chemical content: -------------

Nutritive value: Carbohydrates, Fat, Protein, Vitamin A and C.

Benefits:

• The fresh leaves and the dried seeds are commonly used in cooking and for garnishing the dishes.
• Coriander seeds are boiled with water and drunk as indigenous medicine for colds.
• They are commonly used in Thai dishes, including soups and curry pastes.
• It is a potential medicine for anxiety and insomania.
• Mixture of Coriander juice and turmeric is used as a toner for the skin and a good source to treat acne.

Curry leaf

• The leaves are highly valued as seasoning in south Indian cookong.
• They are also used as an ingredient in the popular Pakistani dishes, Karhi.
• The leaves are also used as a herb in ayurvedic medicine.
• Their properties include much value as an anti-diabetic, anti-oxidant, antimicrobial.
• Curry leaves are also known to be good for hair, for keeping them healthy and long.

Fennel

Fennel is a perennial herb. It is erect, glaucous green and grows to heights of upto 2.5 m with hollow stems. The leaves grow upto 40 cm long.

Edible part: Seeds

Chemical content: anethole

Nutritive value:

Benefits:

• It is a highly aromatic and flavourful herb with culinary and medicinal uses.
• Fennel is also used as a flavouring in some natural toothpaste.
• It is a good carminative and effective for hypertension.
• It is said to improve the eyesight.
• Fennel tea can be used as an eye tonic, applied directly like eye drop.
• It is used to reduce soreness and inflammation of the eye.

Garlic

Edible part: Bulb of garlic.

Chemical Content: Allicin

Benefits:

Garlic is widely used around the world for its pungent flavor as a seasoning or condiment.

Ginger

Ginger is a tuber which is consumed whole as a delicacy, medicine or spice.

Edible part: underground rhizome

Chemical Content: Zingeberine.

Nutritive Value:

Benefits:

• Young ginger rhizomes are juicy and fleshy with a very mild taste. They are often pickled in vinegar.
• They can also be stewed in boiling water to make ginger tea to which honey is often added and to treat the common cold.
• Ginger can be applied as a paste to the temples to relieve headache.
• Ginger acts as a useful food preservative and has been proven to kill the harmful bacteria.

Lady’s Finger

Lady’s finger is otherwise called as Okra. Lady’s finger is a annual or perennial growing to 2m tall. The leaves are 10-20 cm long and broad, palmately lobed with 5-7 lobes. The fruit is a capsule.

Edible part: Fruit

Chemical content: Oleic acid and linolelic acid

Nutritive Content: Edible oil.

Benefits:

• The vegetable has the potential to improve the nutrition.
• It enhances the food security.
• It is the most heat and drought tolerant vegetable.

Lettuce

Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant. It is most often grown as a leaf vegetable. It is typically eaten as raw vegetable used in salads, sandwiches etc. It is grown in humus rich moist soil. The lettuce has high water content and nutritive value.

Edible part: Leaf, stem.

Chemical Content: Folic acid

Nutritive Value: Vitamin A

Benefits:

• Lettuce contains several health building qualities and many medicinal virtues.
• The raw juice of lettuce is cool and refreshing.
• The high content of the magnesium in the juice vitalizes the muscular tissues, nerves and brain.
• It helps to cure constipation.
• Lettuce helps in treating insomania because it has a sleep inducing substance called “lectucarium”.

Onion

Edible Part: Bulbs (a modified stems).

Chemical content: allicin

Nutritive value: Vitamin C.

Benefits:  

• Onions have been found very good for those who are suffering from high blood pressure.
• Onion helps in secretion of urine.
• Onion is rich in flavonoids and thus helps in protection against cardiovascular disease.
• Onions are very good for a healthy growth of hair, strengthen the nails and improve the eyesights.
• It is rich in sulfides, so that it helps in protection of tumor growth.

Potato

Potato is a starchy tuberous and a perennial crop. It has been an essential crop in the Andes. Potatoes are the world’s fourth largest food crop. The English word potato comes from Spanish patato. Potatoes refer to Irish potatoes or white potatoes in the United States, to distinguish them from sweet potatoes.

Edible part: Tuber

Chemical content: carotenoids and polyphenols.

Nutritive value: vitamin C and carbohydrates.

Benefits:

• Potato is used in the food industry as a thickener and binder of sauces and soups.
• It is an adhesive in textile industry.
• It is used in the manufacturing of paper and boards.

Radish

The Radish is an edible root vegetable.

Edible part: Root and the entire plant.

Chemical content: --------------------

Nutritive value: Vitamin C

Benefits:

• Radishes are suggested for the treatment for a variety of ailments including whooping cough, cancer, coughs, liver problems.
• The oil of radish is used as a biofuel.

Tomato

Tomato is an herbaceous plant. Tomato fruit is classified as a  berry. The word tomato comes from a word in the nahautl language, tomatl. The leaves of tomato are 10-25 cms long.

Edible Part: fruit

Chemical Content: lycopene, anthocyanin

Nutritional value: Vitamin C and Vitamin A, Vitamin K

Benefits:

• Tomato is a good blood purifier.
• It is a natural antiseptic that protects against infection.
• Tomato helps to prevent Cardiac diseases
• Vitamin K helps to prevent haemorrhages.
• The Lycopene which is present in Tomato helps to fight against cancer cells.
• The large consumption of tomato can help to improve the skin texture and colour