Although loaches are small in size, they are widely distributed and can be found in any waters and can be caught all year round. It has strong vitality, rich resources, and is also a nutritious small aquatic product. The meat of loach is tender and delicious. The protein content per 100 grams of edible part is as high as 18.4-22.6 grams, which is higher than that of ordinary fish. It also contains 2.8-2.9 grams of fat, 100-117 kcal of calories, 51-459 mg of calcium, and 154-154 mg of phosphorus. 243 mg, iron 2.7-3.0 mg, and vitamins B1, B2 and niacin. Eating more loaches has the effect of curing diseases. Loach has a sweet and flat taste. "Introduction to Medicine" states that it can "tonify the middle and stop diarrhea". "Compendium of Materia Medica" records that loach has the effect of warming and replenishing qi; it has certain medicinal effects on quenching thirst and sobering up, promoting urination, aphrodisiac, and reducing hemorrhoids. It has good curative effect on hepatitis, night sweats in children, hemorrhoids, itchy skin, bruises, finger boils, impotence, ascites, mastitis and other diseases. There are three common ways of eating it:

1. Put an appropriate amount of loach in clean water, add a few drops of vegetable oil, remove the sewage every day, replace it with clean water, and wait for it to drain away the mud and water in the intestines. Wash the ingredients and put them into a pot, dry them over a slow fire, and grind them into powder for later use. Take 5 grams each time with warm boiled water, three times a month. This method is effective for both acute and chronic hepatitis; it can also treat jaundice, protect the liver, and promote the retraction of the swollen liver and spleen.

2. Use an appropriate amount of live loach, process it according to the above method, and cook it with an equal amount of fresh shrimp for consumption, which can treat impotence caused by kidney deficiency.

3. Take 200 grams of live loach each time, fry it in peanut oil until it turns yellow, add an appropriate amount of water and salt, cook it and eat it. It has the effects of tonifying the spleen, strengthening the kidneys and strengthening the stomach.

Oral administration of loach mucus can cure urinary obstruction and hot stranguria; external application can treat white tinea and lacquer sores (skin diseases caused by lacquer poisoning).