If you love Asian cuisine, pea aubergine is one of the vegetables commonly consumed by the people. There are a lot of names of pea aubergine but commonly this type of pea is well known as turkey berry. This type of pea is packed with certain essential nutrients good for diet.
What Is Pea Aubergine?
When you heard about aubergine, which is the UK for eggplant, you will imagine something similar to that. Well, you thought wrong, because pea aubergine is look nothing like eggplant but similar to peas, only the flavour and texture that similar to eggplant, even the locals like Indonesia or Malaysia call this peas as terong pipit, terong is the Indonesian for eggplant. This plant has scientific name Solanum torvum and has close relation to eggplant. In cuisines you could find this type of tea from Thai cuisines up to the Jamaican cuisines because this plant could grow in any fertile soil near the sea level, so this type of tea is quite common in this world. Aside from being super tasty, there are a lot of health benefits of pea aubergine you should know as well.
- Excellent for Weight Loss
Pea aubergine is rich of fiber and one of the health benefits of fiber is excellent for weight loss. Fiber will help controlling appetite and making you feel full longer. Moreover, this type of pea is super low in calories.
- Good for Heart
Some scientific studies have stated that this type of pea is rich of essential minerals and one of them is potassium. Scientifically, the benefits of potassium has essential role in managing the excessive amount of sodium in the blood which is good for heart and reduce the symptoms of high blood pressure.
- Fights Anaemia
Besides potassium, iron and zinc are two types of minerals found in pea aubergine. The deficiency of iron and zinc could lead to anaemia.
- Reduces the Risk of Diabetes
Once a person has been diagnosed with certain types of diabetes, controlling and managing their diet is important matter. For food variation, you could add pea aubergine because as one of the foods with low glycemic level, this pea may be beneficial to manage the blood sugar level.
- Recommended Brain Food
Though children may not like it, due to its soft texture and a bit stinking flavour but studies stated that pea aubergine is one of the super foods for brain.
- Good for Skin
You could find all the benefits of essential vitamins like vitamin C benefits and health benefits of vitamin E in pea aubergine. Those two types of vitamin are potent antioxidants that have essential role in optimizing the production of collagen to maintain the healthy and younger skin.
- Rich of Antioxidants
As mentioned above, there are a quite impressive list of antioxidants you could find in pea aubergine from vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin A, polyphenols, flavonoids, saponins and many more. Anitoxidants are excellent to fight free radicals and also excellent way of how to prevent cancer naturally.
- Contains Anti-Bacterial Agents
Pea aubergine is also containing potent anti-bacterial agents. That is why this pea is used as home remedy to deal with diarrhea and some stomach infections.
- Natural Solution for Gout
One of the amazing thing about pea aubergine is this pea contains potent anti-inflammatory that could flush the uric acid out from body system, so it could help reducing the worst effect of gout.
- Improves Blood Circulation
As rich of essential minerals, pea aubergine may be beneficial to improve blood circulation. Blood has essential role to distribute from oxygen up to nutrients to the whole body cells. Normal circulation will optimize the metabolism process.
- Contains Anti-Inflammatory Properties
As mentioned in some points above, pea aubergine is not only packed with antioxidants but also containing some potent anti-inflammatory properties. That is why pea aubergine is also used to treat some inflammation conditions like gout, redness or pain.
- Home Remedy to Cough
Traditional peoples are using pea aubergine as home remedy to cough and some common flu. To help accelerating the recovery process, this pea is commonly served as soup.
- Promotes Healthy Gut
Healthy gut or digestion is the key to healthy metabolism. As mentioned above, pea aubergine contains some potent anti-bacterial agents that could help maintaining the health of gut and at the same time is optimizing the function of digestive system.
- Prevents Kidney Problem
Some scientific studies have found out a strong correlation between consuming pea aubergine with the lower risk of kidney problems, though further studies are required to find out specific information about this claim.
- Improves Menstrual Circle
For women, irregular menstrual circle is not only an indication that there is something wrong in the system but also could lead to several severer conditions. Consuming pea aubergine regularly has been proven to be beneficial in improving the menstrual circle.
- Good for Pregnancy
Generally pea aubergine is good for women because it is also rich of folate. There are a lot of health benefits of turkey berry during pregnancy from optimizing the fetus development up to reducing the risk of baby born with birth defect.
Cautions of Pea Aubergine
Aside from the health benefits of pea aubergine, you should know as well about the cautions from consuming this tasty pea. It is because not everyone could enjoy the benefits of this type of pea.
- If you are allergic to eggplant or aubergine, it could be ensured that you are probably allergic to pea aubergine as well.
- Since you are going to consume the whole parts of pea aubergine, choosing the organic pea aubergine is highly recommended.
- Some cases have been reported that consuming pea aubergine could be toxic. Well, most of the plant is growing widely in the nature, so you have no idea what things that have been contaminating the plant. That is why well-prepared and well-cleaned pea aubergine is essential to ensure that this pea is safe to consume.
As mentioned above, pea aubergine is easy to grow in fertile soil. It means you could always grow this plant yourself in your back yard. There is no specific procedure you should do to grow this plant because it could easily grow by itself as long as it gets enough water and sunlight. One interesting fact about pea aubergine, this pea is claimed to be able overcome addiction to smoking though further research is required to prove this claim.