Health Benefits of the Texas Grapefruit

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The first grapefruit crops were planted in Jamaica sometime during the 17th century. By the time they came to America there were two popular varieties of grapefruit–the white and the pink. The white grapefruit is generally accepted as the original grapefruit, while the pink grapefruit is a simple mutation.

The fruit was planted in Florida first, because the climate in Florida is ideal for growing juicy citrus fruits, but it failed to make much of an impact competing against the well-established orange. A few decades later, the grapefruit reappeared, in South Texas of all places. It was brought there by Spanish missionaries who offered grapefruit seeds to local farmers as a gift of greeting. Little did they know that the subtropical climate of Southern Texas was perfect for growing grapefruit or that the fruit would soon flourish.

But it would take another few decades for the industry to truly achieve success with new variety of grapefruit that appeared in an orchard in 1929. At that time, pink and white varieties grew side by side, but it was the pink mutation that eventually gave birth to the next mutation. This new Texas grapefruit was red on the inside and it tasted a bit sweeter than its predecessors.

For these reasons, farmers started to breed red Texas grapefruit to the exclusion of the other varieties. In fact, the fruit became so popular that white and pink grapefruit were outlawed in the early sixties, and Texas became known as the home of the Ruby grapefruit. But what they did not know, what they could not have possibly known was that red Texas grapefruit is far healthy than standard white grapefruit. In the next two paragraphs we are going to take a moment to explain why there are such dramatic differences.

Simply put, red and even pink grapefruits owe their colors to a caretenoid called lycopene. This helpful phytonutrient acts as a powerful antioxidant that fights off the free radicals that can damage healthy cells. Many medical professionals also maintain that lycopene has anti-tumor properties and that it may reduce the risk of certain cancers.

In fact, in recent studies, eating lycopene-rich foods like Texas grapefruit and drinking green tea has been shown to reduce the risk of prostate cancer in men. Really, the numbers are rather astonishing. In one study, subjects that consumed Texas grapefruit reduced their risk of the cancer by more than eighty percent! Since the white grapefruit does not contain lycopene, it does not confer theses essential health benefits.

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