“Things weren’t necessarily better in ye olden dayes, or even all that different. But what, oh what, has happened to the grapefruit? When I was a kid, you would often sit down to a meal (not necessarily breakfast), to be confronted with a halved grapefruit. The reason hotels no longer serve grapefruit is that Britain has become the statins capital of Europe… and statins can react badly with grapefruit juice. Hotel management doesn’t need the grief of keeping medics or lawyers on permanent standby. Perhaps the strange, mouth-puckering, acid-metal tanginess of grapefruit will become a lost British taste, like liver and bacon.” (Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian)

In America, where I live most of the time, my wife and I buy grapefruit(s). They come either massive, with thick rinds and somewhat dry and tasteless inside, or small, hard, but juicy – sometimes. One weighs them to see whether they will be suit. My wife tells me that the problem of grapefruit and statins is well-known. Which is strange. Health articles are everywhere in papers and magazines, health is consuming interest both on social occasions and on the media. In all the time I have been here I have read nothing about it, nor has anyone asked me if I am on statins (I am not), and should I be eaten those things? Since this is the new age of raging suspicion, of faux news, of tales of nefarious plots, could this silence on the subject be a plot to protect the citrus growers of Florida or wherever? Nothing, but nothing would in the least bit surprise me. Silly, isn’t it.