Q: I think I remember my mom doing that dumbass "grapefruit diet" when I was a kid. While that diet has been debunked, I heard something recently about grapefruit actually being good for fat loss and health? What's up with this?

A: Yup, I remember that too. In fact, pre-Internet days there was a diet passed around called "The Mayo Clinic Diet" that was basically grapefruit at every meal followed by some bastardized (and not very good) version of the Atkins diet. People swore by it despite the fact that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Mayo Clinic (which has completely disavowed it).

The grapefruit was believed to have some special magical "fat burning" properties, and I remember spending an awful lot of time explaining to people why that was a bunch of crap.

Now it turns out there may be something there after all. In 2006, a study from Scripps Clinic in La Jolla investigated the effect of grapefruit on weight and insulin resistance. (1) They took 91 obese patients and divided them into four groups. Group one got grapefruit capsules before meals; group two got grapefruit juice; group three got half a grapefruit, and group four got a placebo.

The placebo group only lost one-third of a pound, but the other three groups lost between 1.1 and 1.5 pounds. Only the fresh grapefruit group reached "statistical significance" but among a sub-group of patients with Metabolic Syndrome (pre-diabetes) all three lost significantly more weight. And insulin resistance improved in all of them.

The authors admitted that they really didn't understand the mechanism by which it worked, but the fact is that it did.

Either way, grapefruit is a whole food with low calories, high volume, and good enzymes. It can fill you up and be a part of any good fat-loss program. The red and pink varieties even have some cancer-fighting lycopene.

Rab wrote:I aint doing it as i bloody hate grapefruit. one of the only foods i find discusting and not just something im not fond of

Spit wrote:I've heard muttering abouts about grapefruit juice increasing the uptake/potency of supplements taken alongside it- is there any truth in this? If so what's the mechanism, and why aren't we all doing it as a matter of course?