The melon, AKA the Cucurbitaceae family of fruits, is a popular berry fruit with at least 25 varieties worldwide, with several actually considered to be vegetables.
There’s the obscure spiky horned melon, which is popular in Africa. There’s the Chinese hami melon, the Korean melon, sugar melon, and the tiger melon. Contrary to popular belief, the watermelon IS a type of melon.
However, the most popular variety in the United States is the cantaloupe melon, closely followed by honeydew melons. Both have been on the menu of mankind for at least 4000 years. Cantaloupe (known as rockmelon in Australia) was grown in the Nile River Valley of Ancient Egypt, while honeydew melons first appeared in Egyptian hieroglyphics dating back to 2400 BC. Both Napoleon and Pope John Paul II considered the honeydew to be their favourite fruit.
These days, cantaloupe and honeydew melons are more popular than ever. China grows and sells nearly half the world’s cantaloupe supply at 25 billion pounds per year, followed by Turkey at 3.5 billion pounds, Iran at 2.9 billion pounds, Egypt at 2.4 billion pounds and the USA at 2.2 billion pounds. Within the USA, California grows nearly half the country’s produce, followed by Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, and Texas.
Drying cantaloupe seeds to make a tasty snack is widespread in Central and South America, Asia and the Middle East. In fact, the British supermarket Ocado recent struck a deal to sell Mello, a popular melon-based drink that’s sweeping across the Middle East like wildfire.
Hence, we will now continue our quest to analyse and rank every common fruit for acne. We’ll discover once and for all whether melons are useful, useless, or somewhere in between.
Are cantaloupe/honeydew melons rich in acne nutrition?
100 grams of cantaloupe melon, or about a bowl’s worth, contains the following vitamins and minerals:
- Vitamin C – 61%.
- Vitamin A – 68%.
- Calcium – 1%.
- Iron – 1%.
- Vitamin B6 – 0%.
- Vitamin E – 0%
- Vitamin B12 – 0%.
- Choline – 7.6mg.
- Manganese – 2%.
- Selenium – 1%.
- Potassium – 8%.
- Magnesium – 3%.
- Vitamin D – 0%.
- Zinc – 1%.
- Sugar – 7.9g.
- ORAC score – 319.
Cantaloupe melon is immediately a good source of vitamin A (in the plant-based carotenoid form) and vitamin C. We’ve raved about those two nutrients in this article and in my eBook, so in brief, vitamin C clears acne by lowering stress hormone levels and accelerating collagen production. It’s also the most abundant water-soluble antioxidant in the human body.
Vitamin A directly controls both the skin’s oil and keratin protein production, the two main villains behind blocked pores. Vitamin A also accumulates in your cells, and provides a natural armour against free radicals from sunlight (allowing you to make more vitamin D).
Do melons deserve to become the new superfood craze for clearing acne then? The answer is definitely no.
Why? Simply because if you browse through the most ordinary market stall in every town or city, almost every fruit and vegetable for sale will contain just as much vitamin C.
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For instance: a handful of strawberries contains 97% of the recommended daily allowance per 100 grams, raspberries contain 43%, blueberries 16%, blackberries 20%, oranges 88%, and pineapple (a surprisingly good source) 79%.
That’s only fruits; broccoli has 148% per 100 grams, kale has 200%, spinach 46%, potatoes 32%, cabbage 60%, yellow bell peppers 305%, and red bell peppers 212%. The vitamin C in melons is great for acne, but so mundane that it’s no reason to specifically hunt them down.
Likewise, vitamin A getting your daily carbs from 200 grams of sweet potatoes will give you 566% of the RDA for vitamin A. Comparing melon to sweet potatoes is like comparing a rusty old Wild West bicycle to a 200mph freight train. The cantaloupe becomes completely obsolete. Similarly, carrots provide 334% (per 100 grams), kale provides 199%, green leaf lettuce has 148%, red leaf lettuce 149%, and pumpkin provides 170%.
The prospects for the poor old honeydew melon are even grimmer. The trace minerals and vitamins are virtually identical, but there’s only 30% of the RDA for vitamin C and just 1% for vitamin A. The lack of vitamin A is evident in the green colour, as it’s carotenoids which provide the orange hue of cantaloupes.
You could argue that cantaloupe melons are unique as a rare fruit with decent amounts of vitamin A. Only mangoes (21%) and papaya (19%) come close.
Nevertheless, that’s only among fruits. Vitamin A is so common elsewhere that this standout feature pales compared to pomegranate, for instance, which is one of the highest foods in antioxidants overall, not just fruits. Speaking of antioxidants, melon doesn’t contain many; the ORAC score of 319 is feeble compared to the strawberry with 4302. A honeydew scores only 253.
Pineapple (456) and watermelon (142) rank similarly, but neither cantaloupe nor honeydew have the fascinating hidden powers of those fruits (see below). Their magnesium is feeble, which slowly but surely accumulates when you eat bananas (7% of RDA), blackberries (5%) and raspberries (5%).
They also lack interesting phytonutrients. Sure, the cantaloupe has a handful of carotenoid antioxidants like lutein, but compare that to the good old banana, which comes drenched in rutin, quercetin, kaempferol, and tryptophan.
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Melon-lovers might argue that science has not identified the special compounds yet, and that’s definitely possible. However, the same argument could be made for bananas as well.
Nutritionally, the vitamin A content of cantaloupe melons (but not honeydews) is their only claim to fame, and its nothing special anyway.
Do melons have unique acne-clearing powers?
Most fruits are highly complex not just in their basic vitamins and minerals, but also their never-ending array of smaller plant compounds. Hence, there’s always opportunities for unique acne benefits in fruits, like these examples:
Pineapple – contains bromelain, which enhances protein digestion and lowers inflammation.
Pomegranate – contains phytonutrients which inhibit the creation of stress hormones. The best fruit for antioxidants.
Watermelon – increases nitric oxide levels due its l-citrulline content.
Oranges – great for vitamin C, and may detoxify elevated estrogen levels.
Red grapes – contain resveratrol, a popular supplement which increases your body’s natural antioxidant creation.
Unfortunately, if you’re diehard melon fan, neither cantaloupe nor honeydew have any such standout powers. An extensive trawling of all available studies reveals nothing.
Now, this could be forgiven if the melon had some really solid nutrition for acne. For example, blueberries are not unique at all, but they still lower inflammation and free radicals far more powerfully than usual.
In fact, most fruits are at least moderately anti-inflammatory, whether modest like apples or strong like blueberries.
However, melon may lack even this standard fruit power. There is this one promising study:
- Scientists led by Dr I Vouldoukis applied cantaloupe melon extract to cell cultures and tested their immune system cytokine content. Quite simply, the pro-inflammatory TNF-a fell while the anti-inflammatory interleukin-10 (IL-10) rose. In a second experiment, scientists injected some mice with either a placebo or the cantaloupe melon extract (CME), while also injecting the pro-inflammatory chemical IFN-gamma. The melon-injected mice enjoyed more protection against inflammation. Therefore, the scientists concluded that cantaloupe melon had anti-inflammatory properties.
That’s a decent study, but it’s only one study. Apples, oranges, and strawberries have fistfuls of superb inflammation studies to their name. Furthermore, the first part was on cells (in vitro), not on living humans with all their bodily complexity. Part 2 was on mice which, while decent test subjects, are obviously not identical to humans.
To really prove anti-inflammatory properties, you need several different studies on several different chemicals; the IFN gamma which injecting cantaloupe melon reduced is a single pro-inflammatory cytokine among a wide immune system arsenal. Alternative, the fruit could have no studies itself, but several compounds which are proven to be anti-inflammatory, like the the resveratrol in grapes or the pterostilbene in blueberries. Mice studies are decent, but they double in usefulness when you have rat and human studies elsewhere, because then they’re solidifying an existing theory.
Elsewhere, melons have no decent studies for other conditions behind acne: lowering stress levels, improved insulin sensitivity, higher glutathione production, and improvements in sleep deprivation or gut health.
For some reason, nobody has bothered to research cantaloupe or honeydew melons at all. Either that, or scientists across the world are well aware of how little nutritional power melons possess, and steer well clear.
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They do have some good points, like a low sugar content for fruits, of 7.9 grams (cantaloupe) and 8.1 grams (honeydew). They’re also low in FODMAPs, poorly digested carbohydrates which trigger digestive difficulties and acne in sensitive people.
Neither melon has obvious compounds that could cause acne, with the constant exception being random allergies. However, they also contain only 1 gram of fiber per 100 grams, and so won’t feed your healthy gut bacteria like apples or bananas.
History reveals no benefits for acne either
One of the most interesting signposts of a food’s effect on acne is the path it once forged through history.
For instance, we in the 21st century know through science that bananas are highly anti-inflammatory, but numerous ancient civilisations realised the same solely through their experiences.
Archaeologists and historians believe that the domestic banana originated from the Kuk valley of New Guinea in 8000BC. Since then, they’ve been used for treating hangovers, stained teeth, sugar cravings, mosquito bites, indigestion, obsessive food cravings, and kidney stones by various ancient schools of medicine.
With melons, we know they’ve been around a heck of a long time, and are eaten just about everywhere. Cantaloupe first originated in either Middle East or India, and the ancient Egyptians and Romans definitely grew melons.
Cantaloupe was introduced to Europe back in the 15th century and quickly became a popular fruit due to its sweetness. They’re actually named after the papal gardens of Cantaloupe, Italy, the first European location where they were planted according to historians. Cantaloupe melons were first introduced to North America by Christopher Columbus during his second expedition there in 1494.
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Honeydew melons, meanwhile, are even more ancient, first cultivated in Northern Africa and Persia nearly 4,000 years ago. Honeydews were later a tasty favourite of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Again, they were introduced to western and northern Europe during the Middle Ages, and again, Christopher Columbus was the man who brought honeydew seeds to the Americas and allowed future generations to enjoy them.
Spanish missionaries brought them to California way back in 1683. Honeydews remained popular in Europe for hundreds of years where, as we discussed earlier, Napoleon was obsessed with them.
Yet throughout humanity’s long love affair with melon, there are very few stories of it being used for warts, inflammation, wounds, as an aphrodisiac, for hangovers, or for any medicinal purpose.
This is yet another hint that cantaloupe and honeydew melons are at the bottom of the pile for acne.
Conclusion – one of the weakest fruits for acne
Both cantaloupe melons and honeydew melons have decent amounts of vitamin C, but a serious shortage of any unique properties for acne. The cantaloupe’s richness in vitamin A stands out, but even that power can be found elsewhere with ease.
If you’re specifically hunting for a fruit to maximise your acne nutrient intake, you’d be better off with strawberries, pineapples, or pomegranates. Melons rank very low in the halls of acne-clearing fruits, about equally to green grapes and pears.
Despite this negativity though, a nice, sweet bowl of cantaloupe melon is easily better for your skin than a chocolate chip muffin or a slice of cake. Furthermore, there’s no reason to avoid melon unless you’re pushing your sugar intake to the absolute minimum.
Hence, if you’re a huge fan of cantaloupe or honeydew melon, and are already feasting on a bowl per day, it’s a great idea for acne to keep going.
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Thanks for reading!