In tropical and some subtropical countries, dragon fruit is a favourite refreshing fruit and dessert. While it is most delicious when fully ripe, many people also enjoy it when only semi-ripe, offering a pleasant sweet-and-sour taste.

People who are overweight or have high blood pressure are recommended to eat dragon fruit because its mucilage helps reduce cholesterol from food and bile salts. It is therefore also highly suitable for those with diabetes, hypertension, or chronic constipation. Some studies show that dragon fruit can lower blood uric acid levels and help prevent gout and diabetes.

Just 600–700 g of dragon fruit is enough to supply the body’s daily requirement of vitamin C, helping fight diseases caused by vitamin C deficiency and scurvy. When made into drinks such as dragon fruit shaved ice, juice, smoothies, or jelly, it aids in fat reduction and helps women maintain beautiful, radiant skin.

Dragon fruit also contains precious albumin and anthocyanins, is rich in vitamins and soluble fibre. Among these, albumin is a viscous substance that helps detoxify the body in cases of heavy metal poisoning.

In addition, other parts of the dragon fruit plant have useful properties:

The stem helps strengthen tendons and bones, improves meridian circulation, and detoxifies the body. Peel off the skin and spines, wash with salt water, then crush to extract the juice for topical application or use the pulp as a poultice on burns (fire or boiling water), mumps, boils, carbuncles, and fractures.

The flower nourishes the lungs and relieves cough. For people with weak lungs or cough with phlegm, the flowers can be stewed with lean pork as a therapeutic dish. Fresh or dried dragon fruit flowers can be decocted or steeped as tea to treat bronchitis, tuberculous lymphadenitis, pulmonary tuberculosis, and to counteract alcohol poisoning.