Citrus is a rare horticultural beast. All of the blood oranges and tangelos, ugli fruits, and yuzus that exist today come from just a handful of original citrus varieties that started out 7 million years ago in Asia. As a genus, citrus is all sexually compatible because it is so closely related—a buddha's hand and a tangerine can cross and make a viable new fruit. It is also highly prone to mutation, meaning that new citrus varieties pop up all the time.
Citrus arrived in the New World in 1493, on one of the 17 ships in the fleet that Christopher Columbus commandeered for his return. As he set to the business of colonization and genocide, the trees flourished in the Caribbean sun. The first known mention of the grapefruit—thought to be a cross between a sweet orange and a pomelo or shaddock—dates to 1750 in Barbados, according to the Oxford Companion to Food. By 1823, the fruit had traveled to Florida with a French count and slowly gained some commercial popularity.
From morning orange juice to the lime juice that gives guacamole its tang, citrus is entwined in American food culture—but the grapefruit is a true product of the Americas.
 GrapefruitFebruary 06, 2019 |
Born in the USA
Citrus is a rare horticultural beast. All of the blood oranges and tangelos, ugli fruits, and yuzus that exist today come from just a handful of original citrus varieties that started out 7 million years ago in Asia. As a genus, citrus is all sexually compatible because it is so closely related—a buddha's hand and a tangerine can cross and make a viable new fruit. It is also highly prone to mutation, meaning that new citrus varieties pop up all the time.
Citrus arrived in the New World in 1493, on one of the 17 ships in the fleet that Christopher Columbus commandeered for his return. As he set to the business of colonization and genocide, the trees flourished in the Caribbean sun. The first known mention of the grapefruit—thought to be a cross between a sweet orange and a pomelo or shaddock—dates to 1750 in Barbados, according to the Oxford Companion to Food. By 1823, the fruit had traveled to Florida with a French count and slowly gained some commercial popularity.
From morning orange juice to the lime juice that gives guacamole its tang, citrus is entwined in American food culture—but the grapefruit is a true product of the Americas.
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30 ft (9 m): A standard grapefruit tree's potential height
1,500 lbs: Amount of fruit that a single citrus grapefruit tree can yield
1993: The year when Texas red grapefruit was appointed the state's official fruit
85: Number of medications that have the potential to interact with grapefruit
6.65 million: Tons of grapefruit produced globally in 2017/2018
Weapon of condescension
Grapefruit has a strange name, which likely comes from some island amalgam of French and English. The smaller varieties that grew in grape-like clusters were the norm when the fruit was first discovered in the Caribbean. "Grappes" is the French word for cluster. Cluster fruit. The strangeness of the fruit itself and the misleading name made it slower to catch on than sweet, juicy oranges and sunny, tart lemons.
That relative obscurity has, on occasion, made the grapefruit a jumping off point to condescend to others. Supposedly, it was the Great Depression that put the grapefruit in front of a wide American audience, during which surplus grapefruit, along with other agricultural extras, were handed out to hungry families. One widely noted story claims that housewives who had never seen grapefruit before reported that it was too tough to eat—even after an hour of boiling. Similarly, Aziz Ansari has a famous bit overhearing 50 Cent, the rapper, ordering a grapefruit soda in a restaurant and then being confused when it wasn't purple. 50 Cent has since refuted this anecdote.
These stories share a common know-it-all spirit infused with a soupçon of racism and classism. Can you believe? Rappers make a lot of money, but they still don't really recognize common middle-class items. Can you believe? Poor women had no idea what a grapefruit was so they just boiled and boiled them, poor dears.
Pop quiz What is the largest citrus-producing country in the world? |
A diet by any other name
The Grapefruit Diet, also known as the Hollywood Diet, is one of the original fad diets, and is based on the idea that a special enzyme in grapefruit burns fat. Researchers have not found evidence to support this idea beyond baseline benefits that come from adding fruits and vegetables to every meal. There is an enzyme in grapefruit that interferes with the way the body processes some substances, notably many medications, but it does not have a slimming or fat burning effect.
The gist of the Grapefruit Diet—sort of like the Cabbage Soup Diet or the Master Cleanse Lemonade Diet—is a very low-calorie, low-carb meal plan that includes a grapefruit or grapefruit juice at every meal. We're talking 800 calories a day. Dieters follow the plan for 10 (or sometimes 12) days, then take two days off, then repeat. First popular in the 1930s, the Grapefruit Diet came back in the 1980s when it was sometimes referred to as the super-sane and healthy-sounding "10 Pounds in 10 Days Diet."
The Grapefruit Diet was popular enough to inspire a Weird Al parody of the song "Zoot Suit Riot."
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Diet soda diplomacy
Donald Trump famously drinks Diet Coke. A lot of it. He's not the first Oval Office occupant to be way into diet soda, though. That was Lyndon B. Johnson. Fresca, a lime-and-grapefruit flavored diet soda, was introduced in 1966, and Johnson was very, very into it, possibly because grapefruit is a major crop in his home state of Texas.
There are unsubstantiated tales of Johnson's Fresca tap in the Oval Office (it seems that he was actually more into having it served to him by a butler), and not only did he enjoy drinking Fresca, he enjoyed using it as a power play by bullying other politicians into drinking it with him.
Sometimes a diet soda is not just a low-calorie beverage. Has apple juice ever been used as a ploy to ignore the results of a senator's fact-finding mission on a military action in a foreign country?
What makes pink grapefruits pink?
In 1907, the first pink grapefruit was discovered in Florida. If the grapefruit itself is a product of the New World as a whole, the pink grapefruit is wholly American. Its brightly hued flesh comes from increased levels of beta carotene and lycopene.
Pink grapefruit may look artificial, but its flavor is notoriously difficult to synthesize in a lab. The chemical that gives grapefruit its distinct flavor is called nookatone and it is very, very potent stuff. That means that grapefruit itself has a very small amount of nookatone, making it expensive to create grapefruit essence from actual grapefruit for seltzer, shower gel, candy, or perfume. Oxford Biotrans, a British biochemical company, makes nookatone from valencene, a chemical found in other citrus fruit at much higher levels. "Historically, it's a very interesting one for academics to work on because it's quite a difficult chemical synthesis," says Dr. Matthew Hodges, Director of Commercial Operations at Biotrans of nookatone. "They enjoy challenges."
Dr. Hodges notes that specific compounds go in and out of style in the fragrance and flavor industry, and that citrus in general is very on trend currently. "These wax and wane, one thing becomes popular for awhile and then it disappears. Grapefruit is a good measure for that," he says. "We see people more aware of the compound now and they're putting it in more products."
The first grapefruit to receive a US patent was the Ruby Red, in 1929.
Poll What's your citrus style? |
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