The death of grapefruit juice? Why the once popular breakfast staple is disappearing from our supermarket shelves – as younger generations spurn its bitter taste

It’s a bitter pill to swallow for grapefruit fans, but the once popular staple of the breakfast table is disappearing from our supermarket shelves.

Younger consumers are spurning grapefruit juice because of its tart taste, while older fans are finding they cannot drink it because it causes side effects when mixed with several popular medications – including statins and some blood-pressure and hay fever tablets.

Sales have halved since the pandemic, accelerating a gradual decline since the fruit’s heyday in the 1960s and 70s.

Across the UK, annual sales have dropped from around 14.4 million litres in the year to May 2021, to just 7.5 million litres in the year to last month, data from market analysts Kantar has revealed.

Asda is understood to have been the first major retailer to pull its own-brand version off the shelves, in March 2022.

Younger consumers are spurning grapefruit juice because of its tart taste, while older fans are finding they cannot drink it because it causes side effects when mixed with several popular medications – including statins and some blood-pressure and hay fever tablets

Grapefruit is known to interfere with the effects of common medicines, including cholesterol-lowering statins – which are taken by up to 8 million Britons – as well as the blood-pressure medication nifedipine and the antihistamine fexofenadine, among others.

‘Grapefruit… can render medications useless or can cause more of them to end up in the bloodstream, causing an overdose,’ said Star Khechara, an instructor in juice therapy who runs the Skin Nutrition Institute training centre.

‘I personally love grapefruit juice… but as a user of fexofenadine for hay fever, I have to avoid the juice throughout the months of June to August.’

Younger shoppers have turned against grapefruit because they prefer sweeter tastes, experts said. The TikTok generation is also critical of the health benefits of juices – which some see as too full of sugar.