Ampalaya here in the Philippines is believed to be a Diabetes preventative. It's not a melon but a vegetable/gourd. We often eat the early ones, about the size of a golf ball, but the photos show it can grow as large as a cucumber.
Science daily has an article explaining it counteracts insulin resistance, which is thought to be the cause of diabetes type II
People with Type 2 diabetes have an impaired ability to convert the sugar in their blood into energy in their muscles. This is partly because they don't produce enough insulin, and partly because their fat and muscle cells don't use insulin effectively, a phenomenon known as 'insulin resistance'....
The four compounds isolated in bitter melon perform a very similar action to that of exercise, in that they activate AMPK.
Garvan scientists involved in the project, Drs Jiming Ye and Nigel Turner, both stress that while there are well known diabetes drugs on the market that also activate AMPK, they can have side effects.
"The advantage of bitter melon is that there are no known side effects," said Dr Ye. "Practitioners of Chinese medicine have used it for hundreds of years to good effect."
We eat it with our veggies almost every day (usually mixed veggies: Okra, beans, ampalaya etc)
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