Water spinach is no stranger to us, and it has long become a staple dish on the tables of countless households. However, many people know very little about water spinach. Just how high is the health-preserving value of water spinach? Today, we will take you to find out.
Water spinach is also known as Ipomoea aquatica, bamboo leaf vegetable, tongcai, and vine vegetable. It is mostly stir-fried or made into soup with its tender stems and leaves, and it is very nutritious. The fourth month of the lunar calendar is the best season to eat water spinach. At this time, water spinach is not only crispy, tender, juicy, and delicious, but also the best vegetable for detoxification.
Health-preserving Advantages: Traditional Chinese medicine believes that water spinach has a strong detoxification effect. It is cool in nature and sweet in taste, and has the effects of relieving summer heat, promoting water metabolism, clearing heat and detoxifying, cooling blood and stopping bleeding, and moistening the intestines and relaxing bowels. It is praised as a “wonderful vegetable” in “Southern Herbal Records”; it is suitable for treating hemorrhoids, bloody stools, fractures, bites by insects and snakes, turbid urine, leukorrhea, and food poisoning, etc. Usually, for urinary system infections or nosebleeds in children, water spinach can be boiled into soup and consumed, which has a therapeutic effect.
Nutritional Highlights: Modern nutrition science has found that water spinach has a strong detoxification function. Its crude fiber content is extremely rich, composed of cellulose, lignin, pectin, etc. Pectin can accelerate the excretion of toxic substances in the body, and lignin can enhance the vitality of macrophages in phagocytosing bacteria, playing a role in sterilization and anti-inflammation. Water spinach can also help with defecation and prevent cancer. It can accelerate bowel movements, and has a positive effect on preventing constipation and reducing the occurrence of intestinal cancer. It also contains a large amount of vitamin C and carotene, which helps to enhance the body’s constitution and prevent diseases. Modern medicine has also proven that water spinach can lower blood sugar and can be used as an excellent vegetable for the dietary therapy of diabetes patients.
Selection Tips: The wider the leaves of the water spinach, the fresher, crispier, and more tender it is. At the same time, choose the ones without yellow spots and with relatively short stems.
Eating Tips: If the heating time is inappropriate, the color of the water spinach will deteriorate and its nutrients will be damaged. It is best to eat the stems and tender leaves separately. The tender leaves are suitable for quick stir-frying over high heat or making into cold dishes. Pairing them with yuba, tofu, fish, minced meat, sesame paste, etc. can make the nutritional combination more reasonable. The stems can be cut into cubes and stir-fried together with soybeans, okara, etc., which has a unique taste and rich nutrition. In addition, water spinach is cold in nature and slippery, so people with a weak constitution, a deficiency-cold of the spleen and stomach, and loose stools should not eat too much of it. People with low blood pressure and a cold stomach should eat it with caution. When eating water spinach as a cold dish or stir-fried dish, it is best to add some garlic, because garlic can counteract the cold nature of water spinach.
The above is the introduction of the health-preserving value of water spinach for you. We hope it will play a good role in your dietary health preservation.