The Goodness in Grapefruit

When I was a little girl, my father performed a weekly morning ‘grapefruit’ ritual for his three girls.  My sisters and I would dash into the kitchen, excited to greet our ‘Saturday Morning Chef’.  We would hop up onto the three awaiting bar stools, shout our "Good Morning, Daddy", grinning in anticipation.  Breakfast was usually an egg event, either scrambled, boiled or ‘egg in the hole’, but the entrée was always preceded by grapefruit.  We salivated as we watched our father master the carving of each grapefruit section.  He wielded his  ‘special’ grapefruit knife, curved just right to section each precious piece.  Once this dance was ‘fait a complis’, he would sprinkle the sugar on top, to sweeten the sour.  (On Christmas morning, he added a red cherry!).  In the early 50’s, the sugar was a little treat, not yet having invaded every food on the market. And as he sectioned, he would share his inexhaustible knowledge of grapefruit.

"Botanists believe grapefruit originated from a cross breeding of the orange and the polemo.”  This would elicit a chorus of, “What’s a polemo?" 

Or he would chime. “Always start your day with a good source of Vitamin C.  You might choose an apple, an orange or this scrumptious grapefruit.“   

Or “Grapefruit helps you digest your breakfast.  Get ready for the entrée!”

As we got older, we understood that grapefruit did help to de-stress the body, fight infections, clean the liver. I was lucky.  Some children grow up in food deserts and do not know a grapefruit. I was lucky because I was able to learn that not only is grapefruit important to eat, it is also important on the skin.  But in those days we did not often discuss food consumption and skin consumption.

Had my father known, he would have shared some great advice to keep our skin healthy.
“Don’t throw out the peel. Tonight, before you go to sleep, add this grapefruit peel to your bath water. Then massage the peel oil onto your skin."   

Grapefruit essential oil is distilled from the skin of the grapefruit.  On our skin, it acts as an anti-oxidant, anti-septic, anti-inflammatory and disinfectant.  Earth to Body has added white grapefruit to several  products, including creams and lotions, salves and soaps.  The addition of white grapefruit helps rid the skin of excess oils, dryness and blemishes, helping to keep the skin glowing and healthy looking. It is renowned as an anti-aging aid, helping to reduce age spots, fine lines and wrinkles.

Canadians are multi-cultural.  We are proud to learn from each other.  Whether we learn from Greece that avocado is great on the hair, from India that neem is essential to oral health care, or from Barbados that grapefruit oil is a natural disinfectant, we gain an incredible sharing of what the earth has to offer, naturally.

We should thank my Dad, our relatives, our ancestors, and our comrades for  sharing their lore.