Ripe starfruits are eaten out-of-hand, sliced and served in salads, or used as garnish on avocado or seafood. They are also cooked in puddings, tarts, stews and curries. The Chinese cook starfruits with fish. Thais boil the sliced green fruit with shrimp. Slightly under ripe fruits are salted, pickled or made into jam or other preserves. In mainland China and in Taiwan, starfruits are sliced lengthwise and canned in syrup for export. In Queensland, the sweeter type is cooked green as a vegetable. Cross-sections may be covered with honey, allowed to stand overnight, and then cooked briefly and, put into sterilized jars. Some cooks add raisins to give the product more character. A relish may be made of chopped unripe fruits combined with horseradish, celery, vinegar, seasonings and spices.

Sour fruits, pricked to permit absorption of sugar and cooked in syrup, at first 33º Brix, later 72º, made an acceptable candied product though the skin was tough.

The ripe fruits are sometimes dried in Jamaica.

Starfruit juice is served as a cooling beverage. In Hawaii, the juice of sour fruits is mixed with gelatine, sugar, lemon juice and boiling water to make sherbet. Filipinos often use the juice as a seasoning. The juice is bottled in India, either with added citric acid (1% by weight) and 0.05 % potassium metabisulphite, or merely sterilising the filled bottles for 1/2 hr in boiling water.

To make jelly, it is necessary to use unripe "sweet" types or ripe sour types and to add commercial pectin or some other fruit rich in pectin such as green papaya, together with lemon or lime juice.

The flowers are acid and are added to salads in Java; also, they are made into preserves in India.

The leaves have been eaten as a substitute for sorrel.

The juice is believed to be able to reduce blood pressure. Juice of fruit with a ripening index of 3 is preferred for this purpose.

In India, the ripe fruit is administered to halt haemorrhages and to relieve bleeding haemorrhoids; and the dried fruit or the juice may be taken to counteract fevers. A conserve of the fruit is said to allay biliousness and diarrhoea and to relieve a "hangover" from excessive indulgence in alcohol. A salve made of the fruit is employed to relieve eye afflictions. In Brazil, the starfruit is recommended as a diuretic in kidney and bladder complaints, and is believed to have a beneficial effect in the treatment of eczema. In Chinese Materia Medica it is stated, "Its action is to quench thirst, to increase the salivary secretion, and hence to allay fever."

A decoction of combined fruit and leaves is drunk to overcome vomiting. Leaves are bound on the temples to soothe headache. Crushed leaves and shoots are poulticed on the eruptions of chicken pox, also on ringworm.

The flowers are given as a vermifuge. In Southeast Asia, the flowers are rubbed on the dermatitis caused by lacquer derived from Rhus verniciflua Stokes.

Burkill says that a preparation of the inner bark, with sandalwood and Alyxia sp., is applied on prickly heat. The roots, with sugar, are considered an antidote for poison. Hydrocyanic acid has been detected in the leaves, stems and roots.