Eating Grapefruit Too Much Trouble? Try This Method

It isn’t that I disliked grapefruit.

It’s just that it required a lot more time and effort to eat than I thought it deserved so early in the morning, considering it squirts you in the eye and doesn’t contain chocolate.

I blamed this difficulty on poor product design. But now I’ve learned that my problems were a simple case of operator error: It turns out that I’ve been eating grapefruit the hard way my entire life. Perhaps you have, too.

At my house, we sliced them crosswise, along the equator. Then we’d use the knife to cut the flesh loose from the membrane walls - cut, cut, cut, for each segment. Then we’d use a spoon to dig them out.

But here’s the quicker, more efficient method recommended by the people at TexasSweet Citrus Marketing in Mission, Texas. This is so simple, it took me only two minutes on my first try to peel and cut a whole grapefruit into neat, pretty segments with little or no tough interior membrane left on the pieces.

First, with a sharp knife, cut off the ends of the grapefruit, exposing some of the flesh.

Next, set the fruit on end on a cutting board and hold it steady with one hand. With the knife in the other hand, start at the top of the fruit and cut away a strip of skin about 1 inches wide, following the curvature of the flesh. Keep slicing off curved strips of skin until the grapefruit is naked.

Finally, holding the fruit over a bowl to catch the juices, slice down to the core along both sides of each membrane to release the segments, one by one.

Half a medium grapefruit supplies 10 percent of a day’s vitamin C, one-fourth of a day’s recommended fiber and lots of other vitamins and minerals, including folic acid, potassium and thiamin - all for only 60 calories.

That’s the kind of fast-food breakfast we need.