Buying This Food
Look for: Firm fruit that is heavy for its size, which means that it will be juicy. The skin
should be thin, smooth, and fine-grained. Most grapefruit have yellow skin that, depending
on the variety, may be tinged with red or green. In fact, a slight greenish tint may mean that
the grapefruit is high in sugar. Ugli fruit, which looks like misshapen, splotched grapefruit,
is yellow with green patches and bumpy skin.
Avoid: Grapefruit or ugli fruit with puffy skin or those that feel light for their size; the flesh
inside is probably dry and juiceless.
Storing This Food
Store grapefruit either at room temperature (for a few days) or in the refrigerator.
Refrigerate grapefruit juice in a tightly closed glass bottle with very little air space at
the top. As you use up the juice, transfer it to a smaller bottle, again with very little air space
at the top. The aim is to prevent the juice from coming into contact with oxygen, which
destroys vitamin C. (Most plastic juice bottles are oxygen-permeable.) Properly stored and
protected from oxygen, fresh grapefruit juice can hold its vitamin C for several weeks.
Preparing This Food
Grapefruit are most flavorful at room temperature, which liberates the aromatic molecules
that give them their characteristic scent and taste.
Before cutting into the grapefruit, rinse it under cool running water to flush debris off
the peel.
To section grapefruit, cut a slice from the top, then cut off the peel in strips—starting
at the top and going down—or peel it in a spiral fashion. You can remove the bitter white
membrane, but some of the vitamin C will go with it. Finally, slice the sections apart. Or
you can simply cut the grapefruit in half and scoop out the sections with a curved, serrated
grapefruit knife.
What Happens When You Cook This Food
Broiling a half grapefruit or poaching grapefruit sections reduces the fruit’s supply of vitamin
C, which is heat-sensitive.
How Other Kinds of Processing Affect This Food
Commercially prepared juices. How well a commercially prepared juice retains its vitamin C
depends on how it is prepared, stored, and packaged. Commercial flash-freezing preserves
as much as 95 percent of the vitamin C in fresh grapefruit juices. Canned juice stored in the
Grapefruit