The death of grapefruit juice? The breakfast staple is disappearing from supermarket shelves – as older fans abandon the drink to worsen the side effects of statins, blood pressure drugs and hay fever medicines.

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 reject grapefruit juice because of its tart taste, while older fans find they can’t drink it because it causes side effects when mixed with several popular medications, including statins and certain 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 1970s.

Across the UK, annual sales fell from around 14.4 million liters in the year to May 2021, to just 7.5 million liters in the year to last month, data from market analysts Kantar showed.

Asda would have been the first major retailer to remove its own-brand version from shelves, in March 2022.

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

“Grapefruit…can render medications useless or bring more of them into the bloodstream, causing an overdose,” said Star Khechara, a juice therapy instructor who runs the Skin Nutrition Institute’s training center.

“Personally, I love grapefruit juice…but as a user of fexofenadine for hay fever, I have to avoid this juice during the months of June to August.”

Younger shoppers have turned against grapefruit because they prefer sweeter tastes, experts say. The TikTok generation is also criticizing the health benefits of fruit juice – which some consider too high in sugar.