Doing a little digging, I found that there were three different species of dragon fruit. The ones with the red flesh have a few more phenols and a higher proportion of glucose to fructose, but they are essentially the same nutritionally. Besides, cutting into the red dragon fruit, I noticed that it had the same white flesh as the yellow dragon fruit.
I also wanted to know what I was getting into. The “laxative properties” of dragon fruit (red or yellow) are essentially the fiber and perhaps the magnesium. A cup of dragon fruit has 5.5 grams of fiber and 12.6 milligrams of magnesium. The fiber is a good start to the recommended 25 to 30 grams a day, but the magnesium in dragon fruit falls short of the 320 milligrams for females.
Even so, having dragon fruit for breakfast sounded like a good idea for a Saturday morning. So I cut up the dragon fruit Friday evening and was overwhelmed. The two large dragon fruits I bought (at a hefty $6 a piece) come to 4 cups. You read that right. Four cups. If you do the math, that means eating 22 grams of fiber in a single sitting. No wonder the TikTok user spent so much time in the bathroom. That much dragon fruit boosted my magnesium total to 15% of my daily value. I also loved that I would be getting 32% of my potassium for the day. Yahoo, electrolytes!