Grapefruit Diet (Diet!)
Throw out the pizza and beer
Grapefruit Diet (Diet!)
Oh, get those jelly donuts out of here
Grapefruit Diet (Diet!)
Might seem a little severe
Grapefruit Diet (Diet!)
I’m gettin’ tired of my big fat rear…”

– “The Grapefruit Diet, Weird Al Yankovic

I don’t usually eat grapefruit, but every once a while I’ll get the urge to take a bite or two and as soon as the lip puckering tang gets in my mouth, I’ll remember why I don’t like the stuff. Apparently I’m not alone. Google “I hate grapefruit” and you’ll get nearly 578,00 hits! According to a poll of 8,066 respondents taken on the website Amplicate, 26 percent were grapefruit averse, many of whom would no doubt concur with the American playwright Harry Crews who wrote in his biography that when he first tasted the sour fruit, “I only had to touch my lips to my piece to know something was wrong, bad wrong.”

The grapefruit, which has been around for a couple of hundred years is the accidental love child of two types of citrus, the pomelo and the sweet orange which were inadvertently hybridized by Caribbean farmers in the early 1700’s. It’s Latin name “citrus paradisi” (citrus of paradise), refers to its tropical origins and it’s the only citrus fruit that did not originate in Asia. Originally called “The Forbidden Fruit”, possibly as result of its manmade, supposedly non-divine origins, itgot the name “grapefruit” in the middle of the 19th century in reference to the grape like cluster in which it grows in.