From Leaves to the Seeds: 5 Ways to Use Soursop
There are a lot of ways to use soursop, and there are already several food and dishes that use it as one of the primary ingredients. You can find it in sorbets, jellies, smoothies, and even in soursop ice cream which is popular in South America, Africa, Caribbean, and Southeast Asia.
Aside from its sweet and milky flavor, several useful things make soursop one of the superfruits. It is rich in vitamins and minerals. Soursop is even known to be as effective as chemotherapy, making it a cancer-killing fruit. A lot of studies have also shown that soursop has the ability to kill cancer cells in the liver and breast.
What are the practical ways to use soursop to gain its many benefits? To help you, listed below are the five useful ways to use soursop from its leaves to the seeds.
1. Soursop Tree Barks
When you look at a soursop tree, you might think that the only part of it that has definite use is the fruit. You have it wrong.
The soursop tree bark contains alkaloids, phytosterol, murisine, and tannins. Soursop tree bark decoctions are used to treat cough, asthma, and hypertension. The Amazons also use it as an anti-seizure remedy for diabetes.
2. Soursop Roots
Amazon communities also found the soursop roots to be quite useful. It is used as a sedative, in regulating diabetes, and for lowering high blood pressure. Some of the uses of soursop roots include serving as a poison for mosquito larvae and vectors of malaria.
3. Soursop Meat
The soursop fruit itself is rich in vitamin B, vitamin C, iron, and calcium. It can easily be incorporated into various dishes such as ice creams and smoothies. Aside from its sweet and juicy meat, soursop has lots of health benefits. It can be used to relieve fever, stomach pain, eczema, mouth ulcers, and back pain.
4. Soursop Seeds
Most of the healthy soursop recipes you can find will tell you to cut the soursop fruit, peel it, and get and throw away the seeds. However, there are some benefits you can get from the soursop seeds that you might not know.
The 1 cm by 2 cm seed of a soursop fruit contains some bioactive compound. It is an alkaloid compound which is composed of acetogenins and annonaine. Pulverized soursop seeds can be used to formulate skin astringents.
The bioactive compound in the soursop seeds is also famous for being used in plant pesticides in Indonesia.
5. Soursop Leaves
While you can’t eat it by itself, the soursop leaves have a lot of benefits for you. It is mostly used to make soursop tea. The leaves are composed of several compounds such as calcium, protein, fat, vitamin A, vitamin B, and protein.
The soursop leaves are also famous for medicinal properties which made it a standard ingredient in herbal health products.
Most of the medicinal health benefits of soursop fruit such as inhibiting cancer cells come from the nutrients and compounds found in its leaves.
Soursop has proven to have countless health advantages. There are also a lot of ways to use soursop and utilize its benefits such as in supplements like Organic and Kosher Certified Freeze Dried PURE Soursop - Graviola Capsules ( also known as Graviola - Soursop - Guanabana and Guyabano).
These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to treat, diagnose, or cure any diseases.