In 1750 Reverend Griffith Hughes came upon the grapefruit on Barbados and called it “forbidden fruit” because he and his companions were looking for the origin oF the tree of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. This name stuck for years. We know this rather new fruit as the intriguingly delightful grapefruit. All other citrus fruits originated in the Old World, except grapefruit.

At first the grapefruit was thought to be a descendant of the pummelo, but now they think it is hybrid between the pummelo and the orange. By the later part of the 1800's grapefruit trees were beginning to show up in unlikely places like Southern Texas where it was thought too cold for citrus to survive. One very determined grapefruit tree froze to the ground during a very cold Texas winter but survived and produced fruit. After freezing many winters, the tree showed to be a survivor. In 1893 the air of the Texas Rio Grande Valley began smelling sweet with a lingering scent of citrus blossoms and this is where the ruby red was born. At first they planted only white grapefruit in this valley but in the 1920’s they began finding red grapefruit growing on the white trees. They started grafting these mutation branches to develop the ruby red. By 1962 Texas was growing only the red varities, because they could withstand the cold better and tasted sweeter.

We owe the popularity of the grapefruit in America to the stock market crash of 1929. You could obtain grapefruit free with orange food stamps from the welfare board during the great depression. Families encountering the fruit for the first time didn’t know if they suppose to cook it or eat it raw. The welfare board received a lot of complaints from the families that had cooked the grapefruit for several hours and still found it too tough to eat. By the 1940’s grapefruit had caught on everyone had a pointed serrated grapefruit spoon and half a grapefruit with their breakfast.

“Grapefruit packs in lots of nutritional goodies, supplying a heaping dose of vitamin C, folic acid, and potassium — all of which protect your heart,” says Dr. Barry Sears in his book The Top 100 Zone Foods. “Pink grapefruit is relatively rich in anti-oxidants, and ruby red grapefruit provides an added bonus: lycopene, the phytochemical that helps prevent the ‘bad’ (LDL) cholesterol from oxidizing and damaging artery walls. Grapefruit also contains pectin, a form of soluble fiber that has been shown in animal studies to slow down the progression of atherosclerosis. Drinking three 6-ounce glasses of grapefruit juice a day was shown to reduce the activity of an enzyme that activates cancer-causing chemicals found in tobacco smoke. In rats whose colons were injected with carcinogens, grapefruit and its isolated active compounds (apigenin, hesperidin, limonin, naringin, naringenin, nobiletin) increased the death of cancer cells.

There is a Medical Warning: Some medications interact with grapefruit and grapefruit juice, causing the medication to become more intense.

A study, led by Dr. Ken Fujioka on the “Grapefruit Diet” reported the average, participants who ate half a grapefruit with each meal lost 3.6 pounds, those who drank a serving of grapefruit juice three times a day lost 3.3 pounds after 12 weeks some lost up to ten pounds. The most important active ingredient in grapefruit that helps us to lose weight is naringin, a flavonoid compound that gives grapefruit its characteristic bitter flavor and blocks the uptake of fatty acids into cells to prevent our bodies from effectively using carbohydrates.

So pick the new kid on the block, the heavier the better, and enjoy the sweet yet tart delicious ruby red grapefruit.