Grin and Bear Some Grapefruit

Are you a grapefruit lover? If so, I bow to you. I could never stand the fruit. Sure, it’s just as cute and juicy as an orange, but that acidic sour squirt into your mouth just makes me think I’m slurping battery acid. (Remember when Eddie in Stephen King’s It tells the giant spider, “This is battery acid, you slime!” Yeah, I figured grapefruit juice would work way better than an inhaler.)

Still, if you can tolerate grapefruit—or grapefruit juice—you’re wise to cultivate a daily relationship with the fruit, since it comes with plenty of benefits for your health, such as…

A whopping dose of fiber. One grapefruit has more fiber than an apple, an orange, or a banana. In fact, one pucker-y fruit alone has a full six grams, or 25% of your daily value. And even better—half of it is soluble while half is insoluble, which means both your colon and your cholesterol are reaping the benefits. If you like grapefruit more than those vomit-inducing fiber powders, you’re in luck.

Your daily dose of Vitamin C. Yes, you can get this elsewhere, but while you’re eating away at the sourhead in fleshy form, you might as well kill two birds with one squeeze of your watery eyes—er, stone.

Small amounts of other vitamins. Vitamins E, K, A, and B are all found in the fruit.

Weight loss benefits. You can pretty much fill up on juicy grapefruit, since it’s low in calories and sodium but high in nutrients and fat-burning enzymes. Nearly 90% water, a grapefruit may make you feel full without adding too many calories.

Cancer-fighting properties. The vitamins alone help with this, but the fruit is also full of phytonutrients like flavonoids, liminoids, glucarates and lycopene. That’s a pretty good reason to gag over the fruit on its own, really. But to get the full benefit, you have to eat all of the stringy stuff inside—not just the pulp!

Ninja fighting other diseases. Apparently grapefruit is good for battling plenty of other illnesses and problems, such as atherosclerosis, insomnia, diabetes, fever, water retention, stomach problems, swelling, digestive problems, bad cholesterol, sore throat, breast cancer, pancreatic cancer, fatigue, and even the common cold.

So how do you go about stomaching this fruit? You can add some honey or other natural sweeteners, to start. You can also go about picking one the right way—choose a grapefruit that is firm and springy to the touch. The red and pink varieties are also said to be sweeter than the tarter types.