Fruits are important to our daily diet as it contains vitamins and minerals necessary for our bodies to stay healthy.
Mabolo also known as Velvet Apple is a fruit native to the Philippines with its tree known as Kamagong a member of the Ebenaceae family.
The Mabolo fruit has a thin, brownish-maroon skin coated with golden-brown hair.
The skin gives off a strong, unpleasant cheesy odour, but once it is removed, the fruit is quite odour free and has a distinct, sweetish flavour.
Velvet Apples are rated short on the glycemic index which means they supply a steady stream of sugar to the blood rather than a sudden point.
Other apple nutrition facts point to that apples are a good source of potassium, fiber and vitamins A and C.
It is a very useful plant in apple varieties; it contains nutritional benefits and medicinal functions as well. The parts of the mabolo plants for this purpose are the leaves, bark, and the roots.
In Bangladesh, preparations of the mabolo leaves and bark are being used as cleanser, mainly as eyewash and also used as a solution for snakebites.
A decoction of the bark and leaves are commonly used to treat skin problems. You can either drink or pour the tea on your bath water. It is known to be an ideal source of calcium, vitamin B, iron, and protein.
Thus, several ways of preparing the mabolo fruit has been constantly discovered. It is served as dessert, by mixing the fruit with lemon juice or lime. It is also used in salad preparations, by dicing the fruit.
In the same manner, it is used as ingredients in soups, where it changes texture and becomes tough when stewed.
It offers numerous health benefits such as eliminating cough, pains, diarrhoea, and hypertension and heart ailment. Its leaves are also Antioxidant for its tannins and alkaloids contents.