Fruit is the best thing you can put in your body, being made by the goddess for us fruit picking monkeys!

Here are some tips for getting the most of them:

• Eat them on an empty stomach. Most fruits stay in the stomach for only 15 to 20
minutes before they are completely digested (up to half an hour for bananas). Eating them on an empty stomach not only staves off hunger pangs, but also ensures that all their nutrients are absorbed and put to good use by the body.

• Eat them raw. Desserts made with fruit such as goreng pisang or durian cream puffs may be irresistible, but any form of cooking will destroy the fruit's self-digesting enzymes, vitamins and nutrients.

• Eat them before meals. Other foods can stay in the stomach for at least four hours. If fruits are eaten straight after a meal, they start to ferment before their nutrients can be digested and absorbed by the body. This is because they have landed on top of the other foods and have no clear passage to the intestines. The fermenting fruits come into contact with the other food which may have began to rot and ferment after coming into contact with digestive juices. This may also explain why you sometimes feel bloated and constipated after a meal.

• Eat the fruit, don’t drink it. Fruit juice contains only traces of the vitamins found in the fruit. Once a fruit is juiced, it starts losing precious enzymes and vitamins. Orange juice, for example, loses one third of them after half an hour, and all of them after two hours.

• Break fasts with fruit. If you have to go for long periods without food (more than 10 hours), breaking the fast with fruits is best for the body. They not only provide energy very quickly and efficiently; fruits also make sure your body doesn’t use up valuable energy reserves of the body. This is because other foods use massive amounts of energy in order to aid the process of digestion.