| Abstract
| - Bitter melon (Mormodica charantia L.) has been associated with health benefits such as hypoglycemic,antiatherogenic, and anti-HIV activities. The vegetable, however, has an unpleasant bitter taste. Thepurpose of this research was to establish the effect of various processing methods on the moisture,lipid, and protein content of the Sri Lanka variety of bitter melon and to determine the effect of theprocessing methods on momordicosides K and L contents. The processing methods used were frying,blanching, sun drying, oven drying, freeze drying, and bitter masking with five different commercialbitter masking agents. Moisture, lipid, and protein analyses were done using standard AACC methods.Drying decreased moisture content from 92% to 9.5−10.2%. Frying lowered moisture content to 0.8%while increasing lipid content from 3.6 to 67%. Protein content remained unaffected by treatments.A liquid chromatography−electrospray ionization−mass spectrometry (LC/ESI/MS) method was usedto identify momordicosides K and L in methanolic extracts of fresh and processed samples. Onlyextracted ion chromatographs for blanched bitter melon and bitter melon with MY 68 agent showedthe absence of momordicosides K and L. Keywords: Bitter melon; frying; blanching; bitter masking; freeze drying; oven drying; sun drying;momordicosides; LC/ESI/MS
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