Most of these white grapefruits went directly to make grapefruit juice. In fact, Florida had overtaken Texas about a decade earlier and they were shipping about three times as many white grapefruits as Texas shipped red ones. But that was okay, since by that time Florida, California and Arizona had huge crops of white grapefruit. What happened to the white grapefruit? By 1962, Texas decided that they no longer wanted to grow them. And oh, did it ever! Within a decade, there was a commercial grapefruit industry in Texas that was built on the back of the newly-christened “Ruby Red” grapefruit. But since the pink and white grapefruit taste exactly the same, it was up to the sweeter tasting red variety to win the crowd over. The original white grapefruit gave birth to a pink mutant grapefruit, which eventually spawned a red mutant grapefruit.

That's right! A simple mutation altered the fate of the fruit in the States and in the world. In fact, the only thing that saved the grapefruit in America was an accident of nature. Of course, this was before sugar or artificial sweetners were readily available.ĭecades later, the grapefruit found its way to South Texas where it received a similarly chilly reception. At the time, farmers thought the grapefruit would appeal to a population that had a taste for citrus fruits (The orange had come to Florida in the 16th century.) They were wrong! Most people couldn't stand the taste. At its height, grapefruit was one of the most popular fruits in the nation, but when it falls out of fashion…watch out!Īmerica's love/hate love affair with the white grapefruit began in 1823 when the fruit was brought to Florida by way of Jamaica.

It is a fruit that has had more ups and down than a rollercoaster. What was the holdup? In short, farmers have never truly trusted the white grapefruit. That's more than 70 years after frozen concentrated orange just was introduced! In fact, the first concentrated and frozen forms of the juice didn't arrive in the U.S. Though orange juice is the most popular fruit juice on the planet, grapefruit juice has done surprisingly well in comparably short period of time.

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