What is Hawthorn in Medicine and Food?

According to the Pharmacopoeia

This product is the dried mature fruit of Shanlihong or Hawthorn of the Rosaceae family. It is harvested in fall when the fruit is ripe, sliced and dried.
Properties: this product is round slice, wrinkled and uneven, 1~2.5cm in diameter, 0.2~0.4cm thick. the outer skin is red, wrinkled, with small gray spots. Flesh dark yellow to light brown. The middle transverse section has 5 light yellow kernels, but the kernels are mostly detached and hollow. Some slices can be seen on the short and thin fruiting pedicel or calyx remnants. Gas slightly fragrant, taste sour, slightly sweet.
Taste and Meridian: Sour, sweet, slightly warm. Attributes to the spleen, stomach and liver meridians
Functions and Indications: Eliminating food and strengthening the stomach, promoting circulation of Qi and dispersing blood stasis, resolving turbidity and lowering fat. It is used for meat and food stagnation, stomach and epigastric distension, diarrhea and abdominal pain, blood stasis and menstrual occlusion, postpartum stasis and obstruction, stabbing pain in the heart and abdomen, chest paralysis and heartache, hernia pain, hyperlipidemia. Jiao Shanzha’s effect of eliminating food stagnation is enhanced. It is used in treating stagnation of meat and food, diarrhea and dysentery.
Functions and Dosage: 9-12g.
Storage: Place in ventilated and dry place, prevent moth.
Functions of Hawthorn
Promote digestion of fatty food The lipolytic enzyme contained in hawthorn is good for digestion of fatty food, which can effectively promote the secretion of gastric juice in the body and greatly improve the digestive ability.
Preventing arteriosclerosis: Regularly taking hawthorn water can effectively reduce triglyceride and serum cholesterol levels in the body. Besides, hawthorn can enhance the contraction force of heart muscle and prevent angina pectoris.
Calm asthma and resolve phlegm Hawthorn has the effect of calming asthma and resolving phlegm, if the body has the situation of throat discomfort, taking hawthorn water is also a good choice.
Beauty and skin care fresh hawthorn is very rich in vitamin C. It ranks fourth among commonly eaten fruits, second only to prickly pear, fresh jujube and kiwi, and is twice as much as rutabaga. Regularly taking hawthorn water, skin and face can follow well.
Promote digestion Hawthorn contains lipase, which can promote fat digestion, and can increase the secretion of gastric digestive enzymes to promote digestion.
Antibacterial effect Hawthorn has strong antibacterial effect on Shiga dysentery bacillus, Fuchsia dysentery bacillus, Songnai dysentery bacillus and so on.
Development of Hawthorn Products
Hawthorn fresh fruit is seldom directly imported due to its sour taste, and only through processing can it form a consumer market. Available advanced processing technology will hawthorn processing into dry hawthorn, hawthorn beverage, hawthorn health care products, etc., so that hawthorn products are rich in nutrition, flavorful and delicious, and can maintain a certain content of protein, amino acid, vitamin and other nutrients.
Drying HawthornDrying Hawthorn is to increase the concentration of soluble substance in the fruit by reducing the water, in order to inhibit the activities of microorganisms and various enzymes in the fruit, and to achieve the purpose of long-term preservation. The main dried product is hawthorn slices. The selected hawthorn is sliced manually or mechanically, and then dried naturally in the sun or made by microwave or far infrared drying, and the process is simple and convenient for preservation.
Hawthorn Beverage Hawthorn berries can be processed into juice type, pulp type, powder type and other types of beverages. Most of these beverages are firstly extracted juice from hawthorn fruits, and then use the juice as raw material, after mixing and become. Due to the limitation of hawthorn planting area and processing season, in order to prolong the processing period of hawthorn beverages, they can be processed into hawthorn juice and its concentrated hawthorn juice.
Hawthorn extract products Hawthorn flavonoids have high antioxidant and anti-free radical activities, and are more ideal raw materials for producing natural health food, which can be extracted from its leaves and kernel oils by supercritical extraction technology, and then spray dried or vacuum freeze dried and other technologies to obtain powder products.