There are a million so-called “hacks” for picking the best fruit at the grocery store. But the internet may have just unlocked its weirdest produce tip yet, and yes, it involves inspecting an orange’s “butthole.”
A woman on social media claims the key to picking the sweetest navel orange is all about the little hole on the bottom, known as the “blossom end.” That’s the spot opposite where the orange was attached to the tree. Social media, of course, has given it a much more memorable name.
According to the woman, you want to avoid oranges with a large, wide opening on the bottom. In her words, you should be looking for one that is small, tight, or completely closed. She claims that is the sign of a sweet orange, while wider openings are bad news for your taste buds.
She credits this wisdom to another woman named Paige, who describes herself as an orange-picking expert. Paige even laid out a three-step ranking system for choosing the perfect orange, and color is not the top priority.
Step one is, once again, checking out the booty hole. Paige says the best oranges have a small opening, and not one that looks, in her colorful phrasing, “prolapsed” or “cavernous.”
That is apparently the most important factor of all.
Step two is weight. Heavier oranges are better, which lines up with a lot of more traditional fruit-picking advice. Extra weight usually means more juice, which is rarely a bad thing.
Color only comes in at step three. Paige says more vibrant orange fruit may generally be better, but she insists it is less important than the first two steps. According to her, an orange can still be sweet even if it looks a little yellowish or greenish, as long as that blossom end passes your backend inspection.
To back up her credentials, the woman in the viral video insists she eats two oranges every single day and has been doing so for years. That is her proof that she knows what she is talking about.
Is this advice scientifically proven? Not exactly.
But it has clearly struck a nerve online, where people are equal parts curious, skeptical, and deeply uncomfortable inspecting citrus quite this closely in public.
Still, if you catch someone staring a little too intently at the bottom of an orange in the produce aisle, now you know why.