WHEN AND HOW TO EAT FRUIT.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 41, 22 May 1906, Page 2

WHEN AND HOW TO EAT FRUIT.

To obtain most benefit from fruits they should be eaten at the end of the chief meal. This is a general rule laid down in the "Lancet" by Dr. Gordon Sharp, but there are some exceptions. Bananas, for example, perhaps have little digestive activity, and besides they are as much a food as a fruit. They may be eaten with any meal and to many people they are most acceptable when they are cut in thin slices and i eaten with bread-and-butter. When not quite ripe they may be placed in a hot oven till they, are soft. In the same manner apples may be baked in an oven or roasted in front of the fire. Either of these methods preserves the flavour of the fruit. Six or eight stewed prunes eaten half an hour before breakfast often prove laxitivo later in the day, while double the number eaten with or after a meal may have no effect as an aperient. Stewed figs or apples may also be eaten before breakfast in cases where the stomach cangtolerate them. li an orange is peeled and then cut into thin slices so that the juice is set free and castor sugar strewn over the slices it is an aid to digestion Many fruits if eaten when the stomach is comparatively empty, give rise to acidity. Grapes are especially harmful In this direction. Every medical man has come across patients who have dined for weeks on half a dozen bananas, a pound of strawberries, a pound of uncooked apples, or a pound of grapes or other fruit. It is often the poor creature who is run down who takes to this fruit craze, and, as might be expected, the injudicious feeding makes his. condition worse.