Yellow Squash Nutrition Facts, Benefits & How to Eat It

Dr. Josh Axe · Free quiz

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Yellow squash is the bright, tender summer squash that fills market tables from early summer on, with either a curved neck or a straight one. You can shave it raw into a salad or have it sautéed and on the table in minutes.

Squash is the first vegetable on my list of foods to eat,4 and I name it when I talk about the colors of foods:

People have been growing squash for about 10,000 years.5 The yellow squash on your counter is light, low in carbs, quick to cook and easy on digestion, so it's simple to eat more of.

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What is yellow squash?

Summer squash comes off the vine young and tender.6 Winter squash, butternut and acorn squash among them, stays on the vine to mature, which gives it a hard shell and denser flesh, so the two cook and eat quite differently.

Botanically, yellow squash is a fruit, since it grows from the flower and carries the seeds, but you cook and eat it as a vegetable. I file summer and winter squash with the vegetables, even though they're technically fruits.4

A short history of summer squash

Young squash had reached Italian kitchens by the mid-1500s, and about half a century later, Italian books on cooking treated round and long young squash as separate dishes. The zucchini, the best-known summer squash today, came later: it traces to the area around Milan, perhaps as early as 1850, the youngest of four related groups of Cucurbita pepo varieties.6 Crookneck and straightneck are the yellow summer squashes of the same species.

Yellow squash nutrition facts

Yellow squash (crookneck and straightneck), raw, per 1 cup sliced (127 g) and per 100 g, from USDA FoodData Central; % Daily Value uses FDA reference values.12

Per 100 calories, yellow squash supplies about 113% of the daily value for vitamin C.12 A cup also carries 368 micrograms of lutein and zeaxanthin and 114 micrograms of beta-carotene, carotenoids that are more concentrated in the skin than in the flesh.17

Is yellow squash good for you?

How does yellow squash work in your body?

Yellow squash works mostly through volume. It's 94% water with a little fiber, so it adds weight and bulk to a meal for very few calories, and people tend to eat a steady weight of food rather than a steady number of calories.13

Penn State researchers tested this in the lab. Forty-eight adults enrolled and 41 were counted in the results; they ate all their meals in the lab one day a week for three weeks, and each person ate all three versions of the menu, in random order. The standard menu was carrot bread at breakfast, macaroni and cheese at lunch and chicken and rice casserole at dinner, and the two lighter versions swapped in 3 or 4.5 times as much puréed carrots, yellow squash and cauliflower. On the most vegetable-rich day, people ate 487 grams of vegetables instead of 270, about an 80% increase, and the dishes held up on taste: both lighter carrot breads were rated tastier, with a better texture, than the standard recipe, and only the lightest macaroni and cheese scored lower on taste.3

The same pattern shows up in everyday eating. In a national survey of 7,356 U.S. adults, men and women whose diets had the lowest energy density, meaning the fewest calories per bite, ate about 425 and 275 fewer calories a day than those with the highest, while eating about 400 and 300 grams more food. People who ate the most fruits and vegetables had the lowest energy density and the lowest rate of obesity.9 For more on fullness, see satiety.

Yellow squash benefits, ranked by evidence

Ranked by the strength of the research, yellow squash helps most with fuller meals on fewer calories, better metabolic health markers, vitamin C for your immune defenses, a varied plate, steadier blood sugar and gentle digestion.

Is yellow squash low-carb and keto-friendly?

Fiber doesn't raise blood sugar, so on a keto diet non-starchy vegetables barely count against your carb budget.18 Yellow squash is easy to eat in quantity, and so is the rest of the non-starchy vegetables list and these low-carb vegetables.

Non-starchy vegetables make the top 10 foods in my Type 2 Diabetes Protocol, which calls them the foundation of every plate and the easiest way to crowd out starch. Its plate rule fills half the plate with non-starchy color, a quarter with protein and a quarter with smart carbs, and saves the starch for the end of the meal, after the protein, fiber and fat.13

Meal order has been tested directly. In a Weill Cornell trial, 11 adults who had type 2 diabetes and took metformin came in for the same 628-calorie meal on two days, a week apart, in a different order each time, so each person tried both: chicken, a lettuce and tomato salad and steamed broccoli first with the bread and orange juice 15 minutes later, or the bread and juice first. With the vegetables and protein first, blood sugar was 28.6% lower at 30 minutes, 37.0% lower at 1 hour (125.6 against 199.4 mg/dL) and 16.8% lower at 2 hours.14 That meal's vegetables were salad and broccoli; yellow squash fills the same first slot on your plate. Your targets are in normal blood sugar levels, and the insulin resistance diet lays out a full plan. If you take medication for blood sugar, keep taking it as prescribed and let your prescriber adjust the dose as your numbers improve.13

Yellow squash and eating the rainbow

Eating by color is an easy way to keep your plate varied, and in summer, yellow squash brings the yellow. My advice draws on ancient wisdom here: focus on a variety of colors, because each color or pigment brings its own benefits, and a broad spectrum of color brings you as many of those benefits as possible.4 Heal Your Cells, which I wrote with Dr. Will Cole, tells you to eat the rainbow every day: "Include a full spectrum of colorful plants: deep greens, reds, purples, yellows, and blues."19

In one episode of my show, I noted that the average person rotates through about 10 different plants a week, and the goal is 20 to 30. Rotating your steamed or baked vegetables gets you there: one day broccoli and cauliflower, the next carrots and asparagus, then zucchini and squash, so that across the week you're eating the full color of the rainbow.20

The research on variety lines up with that habit. In a British study that followed 3,704 adults for 11 years, variety was counted as the number of different fruits and vegetables people ate in a week of food diaries. Those who ate the greatest variety had 39% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than those who ate the least, independent of how much they ate; greater variety of vegetables alone went with 23% lower risk and of fruit with 30% lower risk.11

Your gut bacteria respond to variety, too. In the American Gut Project, a citizen-science study with more than 11,000 participants who mailed in stool samples and reported what they ate, those who ate more than 30 different plants a week had more of the bacteria that ferment fiber into short-chain fatty acids, such as Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, and less of several kinds of antibiotic-resistance genes than those who ate 10 or fewer.12

To put it to work, set yellow squash beside something green, red and purple: spinach or broccoli, tomatoes or red peppers, and eggplant. For more on what the colors carry, see phytonutrients.

Yellow squash vs. zucchini

Yellow squash and zucchini are the same species, Cucurbita pepo, both picked young, and they cook the same way, so you can swap one for the other in any recipe.6 Per 100 grams (about 3½ ounces) raw, yellow squash has 19 calories and 3.88 grams of carbohydrate, zucchini has 17 calories and 3.11 grams, and each has 1.0 gram of fiber.121 Use both, and let the season and your recipe decide.

How to cook and eat yellow squash

Yellow squash is good raw or cooked, and it's ready in minutes either way.

Cooked. Yellow squash takes well to steaming, sautéing, roasting and grilling. Gentle cooking methods like steaming or sautéing can increase the bioavailability of certain nutrients,19 and my gut protocol notes that a healing gut prefers warm, cooked, soft foods over raw, cold or fibrous ones.16 For a healing gut, I recommend steamed vegetables such as zucchini and green beans, or vegetables in a soup, because they're very easy to digest.22

Raw. If your digestion is strong, shave it into ribbons for a salad or spiralize it into noodles.

Skin on, with a healthy fat. Leave the skin on: in a lab analysis of three varieties of Cucurbita pepo, carotenoids were more concentrated in the skin than in the flesh.7 Cook or dress it with a healthy fat, too. In a small study, 7 adults ate identical salads of spinach, romaine, cherry tomatoes and carrots on three occasions, in random order, and absorbed almost no carotenoids with a fat-free dressing, more with a reduced-fat one and the most with a full-fat dressing.23 I recommend extra virgin olive oil as your everyday cooking fat. Season steamed squash with sea salt, or with olive oil and sea salt, or do what I do and dip the slices in hummus.24

Go easy on boiling. USDA's boiled yellow squash carries 11.6 milligrams of vitamin C per 100 grams, against 19.3 raw, while its lutein and zeaxanthin hold steady (315 micrograms per 100 grams, against 290 raw).251 In a lab comparison of cooking methods in other vegetables, vitamin C held up best with microwaving and worst with boiling.26 Steaming, sautéing and roasting keep squash firmer and more flavorful.

How much yellow squash should you eat?

Treat yellow squash as one color in your rotation, alongside greens, reds and purples, rather than the whole vegetable portion. If vegetables are new to your plate, build up a little at a time so your gut can adjust.

How to buy and store yellow squash

Buying. Pick small to medium squash that are firm and glossy, without soft or wrinkled patches. Younger squash has thinner skin and smaller seeds.

In season. On my show, I've named squash and zucchini among the in-season vegetables worth buying at a local farmers market, and in the summer, my family heads to ours pretty much every week to buy fruits and vegetables.28 See summer vegetables and eating seasonally for what else is ripe.

Organic. Because you eat yellow squash skin and all, buy organic when you can. My rule of thumb is that organic matters less for produce with a peel you take off, such as grapefruit, and more for produce you eat whole.29 My vegetable list notes that organic fresh or frozen vegetables are best.4 Summer squash is also on the FDA's list of GMO crops grown in the U.S.; the agency notes that GMO summer squash resists some plant viruses but isn't widely grown.30 Certified organic rules exclude genetic engineering, so organic squash is non-GMO.31

Storing and washing. Refrigerate squash (the FDA advises keeping perishable produce at 40°F or below) and cook it within a few days. Just before cooking, wash it under running water without soap, scrub it gently with a clean produce brush, dry it with a clean towel and cut away any bruised spots.32 Trim the ends and leave the skin on.

Is yellow squash safe? Side effects and who should be careful

Interaction check: Low. Summer squash has no documented medication interactions, and a cup carries only small amounts of vitamin K (3% of the daily value) and potassium (6%).12

Bitter squash

Domestic squash has lost most of the cucurbitacins, the bitter, toxic compounds wild squash carries,5 but now and then a squash turns bitter. In a French poison-control series of 353 people exposed to bitter, non-edible squash between 2012 and 2016, nearly all of them by eating it, 204 had symptoms, mostly diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain, sometimes with dehydration, low blood pressure, a fast heart rate, headache or dizziness. There were no deaths or severe cases; 14 people had moderate symptoms, older people more often than younger ones, and most of the squash had been bought in stores rather than grown in gardens.33 The researchers' advice is the rule above: throw away any squash that tastes bitter. If vomiting or diarrhea after eating bitter squash is severe or won't stop, get medical care.

Squash allergy

Allergy to Cucurbita pepo is uncommon but real. The first four confirmed cases of zucchini allergy were reported in 2000, each confirmed with a food challenge in which neither the people nor the researchers knew who got what. Symptoms included mouth itching, nausea, diarrhea and itchy skin. Some of the allergens held up to heat, and in two of the four people, the reaction involved profilin, a protein shared with many pollens.34 In one documented case, a child had a delayed-vomiting food allergy to zucchini and later outgrew it.36 If your mouth itches, or hives or swelling follow a meal with squash, avoid it from then on, and get emergency care for any trouble breathing. For the full list of warning signs, see food allergy symptoms.

Kidney stones and oxalates

For anyone prone to kidney stones, yellow squash is an easy vegetable to keep on the plate. It isn't on the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases list of high-oxalate foods to limit, which names spinach, rhubarb, nuts, peanuts and wheat bran.35

The bottom line

Yellow squash: frequently asked questions

References

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15. Axe J. Ancient Remedies: Secrets to Healing with Herbs, Essential Oils, CBD, and the Most Powerful Natural Medicine in History. Little, Brown Spark (Hachette Book Group); 2021 (five-element section, earth element: "Organs: Spleen, pancreas, and stomach ... Color: Orange and yellow").
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Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DNM, CNS

Doctor of Natural Medicine · Founder, DrAxe.com

Dr. Axe is a certified doctor of natural medicine, clinical nutritionist, and multiple New York Times bestselling author. He has spent 20+ years in clinical practice helping people heal at the root cause and founded one of the most-visited natural-health platforms in the world.

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