Overview
About Ugli fruit
Ugli fruit is a Jamaican tangelo, a natural hybrid of grapefruit and tangerine with some Seville orange in the background, sold under a trade name that describes its loose, blotched, unattractive rind rather than the fruit inside, which is sweeter and much less bitter than a grapefruit.
That parentage is the single most useful fact about it, and it is not a flavour note. Grapefruit contains furanocoumarins that interfere with a major drug metabolising enzyme, and a grapefruit hybrid can carry them too.
Sensitivities
How Ugli fruit scores
Watch for
What trips people up
- The grapefruit drug interaction is the real caution here. Furanocoumarins in grapefruit inhibit intestinal CYP3A4, which raises blood levels of a long list of medicines including several statins, some calcium channel blockers, certain immunosuppressants and some anxiolytics. Grapefruit hybrids including tangelos are generally treated as carrying the same caution. If your medication label says avoid grapefruit, that advice extends here.
- Every FODMAP column on this row is unrated rather than clean, and the grades it does carry are shared byte for byte with a block of unrelated entries in the alphabetical tail of the dataset. Treat this row as largely untested.
- It is a tangelo, and there is a separate tangelo page. The two are close relatives rather than unrelated fruits, so read them together.
- Citrus peel oil is a contact irritant for some people, and ugli fruit has a lot of loose rind to handle.
- The rind looks damaged even on perfect fruit. Blotches, wrinkles and green patches are normal and are not a sign of spoilage.
Diet fit
Where it fits
Swap ideas
More alternatives
FAQ
Common questions about Ugli fruit
Does ugli fruit interact with medication like grapefruit does?
It should be treated as though it does. Ugli fruit is a tangelo, a hybrid with grapefruit in its parentage, and the compounds responsible for the grapefruit interaction are furanocoumarins present in grapefruit and its relatives. Those compounds inhibit CYP3A4 in the intestinal wall, so drugs normally broken down there reach the bloodstream at higher concentrations than intended. The list of affected medicines includes several statins, some calcium channel blockers, certain immunosuppressants and some sedatives, and the effect can last a day or more from a single serving. If a medication warns against grapefruit, the safe assumption is that it covers grapefruit hybrids too, and your pharmacist can confirm for your specific drug.
What does ugli fruit taste like?
Much milder than its grapefruit parentage suggests. It is sweeter and considerably less bitter than a grapefruit, closer to a tangerine with a citrus tang and some floral aroma, and it is juicy with relatively few seeds. The rind is thick, loose and easy to peel by hand, which is one of its real selling points. The name refers to the appearance of that rind, which is blotched, wrinkled and often greenish even when the fruit is perfectly ripe.
How reliable are the trigger grades for ugli fruit?
Not very, and it is worth being straightforward about that. Every FODMAP column on this row is unrated rather than measured, and the grades it does carry are identical, column for column, to a block of unrelated entries sitting near it alphabetically in our source data, which points to backfilled defaults rather than research. Read the page for the drug interaction and the identification, and treat the trigger columns as unestablished. As a general guide, citrus of this type behaves like other sweet oranges and mandarins.
References
Read the background
Ratings reflect the Triggerbites ingredient database and may vary with portion size and preparation.