Seven Common Fruits and Their Proper Ways to Eat
Why can someone eat a fruit’s peel and cure illness? Why does one person eat twice as many lychees as another and feel great, while you get heatiness? Actually, eating fruit requires knowledge. Understanding how to eat fruit not only makes it tastier but can also treat illness:
Litchi Eating Method
Soak whole litchis in diluted salt water, then refrigerate before eating. This prevents heatiness, relieves stagnation, and increases appetite. Soaking in a cup of tea made from dried litchi leaves may also relieve indigestion and diarrhea caused by eating too many litchis.
Pineapple Eating Method
Peel and remove the “spikes,” slice into pieces, soak in diluted salt water, refrigerate before eating. Salting removes bromelain, reducing allergens and preventing allergies or indigestion. After salting, cut into small pieces, mix with cheese or soft ice cream, freeze, and enjoy—more delicious.
Sugarcane Eating Method
Start eating sugarcane from the top end—it gets sweeter the more you eat. If you start from the bottom, it becomes increasingly bland, leaving the last third unappetizing. In winter, cut sugarcane into 20–30 cm sections, boil for ten minutes, then eat while hot—much sweeter than raw.
Watermelon Eating Method
The ideal watermelon is thin-skinned, seedless, and sandy-textured. For small 0.5 kg Taiwanese watermelons, freeze them, poke a small hole, and use a small aluminum spoon to scoop out the flesh. If you buy a bland-tasting watermelon, treat it like winter melon—cut into chunks, keep the rind, and stew with duck (add tofu skin, coix seed, etc.). This helps cool down, lower blood pressure, stimulate appetite, and quench thirst.
Durian Eating Method
Choose durians that are 7–8 ripe—less stinky, easier for beginners to accept. Overeating may cause heatiness and nosebleeds. To counteract, boil the husk in diluted salt water. Using the inner husk helps relieve stagnation. Cooking the inner flesh with chicken to make soup is a nourishing tonic for women, helping to warm the stomach and dispel cold.
Banana Eating Method
Bananas are cool in nature—lower blood pressure, reduce heatiness. Those with cold stomachs or weak constitutions should avoid overeating. The best bananas are those with speckles or “plum bananas.” Dip in diluted salt water, freeze, and eat—excellent texture. Banana peels can be sliced, soaked in vinegar, then mixed with bitter melon and shredded cabbage—delicious. Slice and coat with egg and flour, fry—crispy and tasty. Mash banana flesh, mix into ice cream, freeze, or add to jelly, cool, and serve as banana jelly cake. Or wrap with rice flour and boil as dumplings.
White Pear Eating Method
Besides eating fresh and peeled, you can mash it into pear paste, add rock sugar, and consume—clears heat, treats wind-heat cough. Alternatively, cut into chunks with skin, stew with papaya, rock sugar, and pork bone—refreshing, clears lung heat, and stimulates appetite.