Cucumbers

Cucumbers provide our bodies with essential vitamins and nutrients. Cucumbers  are a bona fide tasty and healthy vegetable in their own right. Cucumbers will soon give you reason to eat them on their own!

Types of cucumber include:

Dosakai - A cucumber that is yellow in color, has a round shape and is available in many parts of India. Commonly added in Chutney, Sambar or Soup, Daal and also in making Dosa-Aavakaaya (a type of Indian Pickle).
English cucumbers - Have very little in the way of seeds and can grow to around 2 feet in length.
Mediterranean cucumbers - Skins are smooth with nearly seedless flesh, they have a mild taste.
Japanese cucumbers - A dark green cucumber with a very bumpy skin. Mainly used for slicing, salads and pickling.

Health benefits of Cucumber

• Researchers have long been familiar with the presence of unique polyphenols in plants called lignans, and these health-benefiting substances have been studied extensively in cruciferous vegetables (like broccoli or cabbage) and allium vegetables (like onion or garlic). Recent studies, however, have begun to pay more attention to the lignan content of other vegetables, including cucumbers. Cucumbers are now known to contain lariciresinol, pinoresinol, and secoisolariciresinol—three lignans that have a strong history of research in connection with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease as well as several cancer types, including breast, uterine, ovarian, and prostate cancers.

• It is one of the very low calorie vegetables; provide just 15 calories per 100 g. It contains no saturated fats or cholesterol. Cucumber peel is a good source of dietary fiber that helps reduce constipation, and offer some protection against colon cancers by eliminating toxic compounds from the gut.
• It is a very good source of potassium, an important intracellular electrolyte. 100 g of cucumber provides 147 mg of potassium but only 2 mg of sodium. Potassium is a heart friendly electrolyte helps bring a reduction in total blood pressure and heart rates by countering effects of sodium.
• Cucumbers contains unique anti-oxidants in moderate ratios such as α-carotene, vitamin-C, vitamin-A, zea-xanthin and lutein. These compounds help act as protective scavengers against oxygen-derived free radicals and reactive oxygen species (ROS) that play a role in aging and various disease processes. Their total antioxidant strength, measured in terms of oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC value), is 214 µmol TE/100 g.
• Cucumbers have mild diuretic property, which perhaps attributed to their free-water, and potassium and low sodium content. This helps in checking weight gain and high blood pressure.
• They surprisingly have a high amount of vitamin K, provides about 17 µg of this vitamin per 100 g. Vitamin-K has been found to have a potential role in bone strength by promoting osteotrophic (bone mass building) activity. It also has established role in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease patients by limiting neuronal damage in their brain.