A fair number of Complemenary Medicine practioners recommend eating Bitter Melon 2 - 3 times a week. Studies are demonstrating that it has powerful blood sugar control and anti-tumor properties. It is used in Asian medicine to treat diabetes.
Whenever I found some they were not organic. But the benefit so superseded the ingestion of the pesticides, I bought the ridged, bumpy cucumber-like vegetable anyway.
Bitter Melon is the only apt name for this veg! Method of preparation and recipe will decide whether you will eat it or not.
To prepare bitter melon, slice the fruit open and remove seeds and pith. Do not peel. Beginners to bitter melon may parboil the fruit to lessen bitterness, although aficionados say this changes the texture too much. Typically bitter melon is stuffed, pickled, or curried and served with meat or in soup.
Here are some suggestions:
Dice and add to Pasta Sauce with lots of garlic and oregano
Dice and cook with other vegetables, like sweet potatoes or peas in a flavored broth
Cook it with onions and pineapple chunks, season with cinnamon
Add it to a Curry dish
Put some in a Stir Fry with lots of ginger, season with Coconut Aminos
Stuff halves with heavily spiced grass-fed beef, onions and tomatoes
The evidence
Bitter melon is a fruit that grows in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. Its reputation as a cure for Type II diabetes is what spiked the interest of Dr. Rajesh Agarwal, a lead researcher in the Colorado study. He thought bitter melon might treat pancreatic cancer, since Type II diabetes often precedes the disease.
Researchers examined the effect of bitter melon on 4 different lines of pancreatic cancer cells and in mice. Mice were injected with pancreatic tumor cells and were randomly divided into one of two groups. One group received water (control), and the second was given bitter melon juice for six weeks. At the end of the study, the tumors that developed on the mice were dissected, weighed, and analyzed.
The results showed that bitter melon juice inhibited cancer cell proliferation and induced apoptosis (cell death). Tumor growth was inhibited by 60% in the treatment group with no signs of toxicity.
Other resources:
A-tonne-of-bitter-melon-produces-sweet-results-for-diabetes
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3321233/
~ Be Well.