Grapefruit vs Grapes: Which Is Less Inflammatory?

Neither grapefruit nor grapes is less inflammatory than the other: both score 2 on the inflammation scale. They sit in the same part of the fruit bowl, and both earn that score on what they contain rather than on a result in a blood test.

The bitterness in grapefruit is naringin, a flavonoid your gut turns into naringenin, and pink and red varieties add lycopene, an antioxidant the white ones lack. Half a grapefruit covers about half a day of vitamin C. Six months of daily grapefruit juice left women’s arteries slightly less stiff, although six weeks of eating the fruit daily left the inflammation marker in the blood unchanged. One warning outweighs all of that: grapefruit blocks a gut enzyme that breaks down many common medicines, and the block lasts about a day, so taking your pill at another hour does not get around it. Check your prescriptions before you make grapefruit a habit.

Grapes keep their best part in the skin, the dark pigments and tannins, so black and red grapes beat green ones. Sugar is the weak spot: a grape holds little fibre for a fruit and gives you nothing to slow down for, no peel and no core, so a bunch disappears faster than a bowl of berries would. Grape seed extract, the concentrated form, brings blood pressure down a little, but grapes themselves have not reliably shifted the inflammation markers. Eat grapefruit in segments rather than as juice, because most of the naringin sits in the pith that juicing throws away, and serve grapes in a bowl instead of eating from the bag.