Years ago there was something called the Grapefruit Diet, a.k.a. the Hollywood Diet. It was touted as a miracle, able to help even the fattest of the fat shed pounds fast. The problem was, you had to eat a lot of grapefruit—like half of one at every meal. Plus, with only 1,200 calories a day, the diet was believed to be too low in nutrition to satisfy the needs of most people—and it certainly wasn’t a lifestyle nutrition plan.
Apparently, however, the grapefruit does have some amazing properties, including weight-loss benefits. According to the March ’12 Health, “People who ate half of a grapefruit before each meal (without making any other dietary changes) shed an average of 3 1/2 pounds over 12 weeks.” That was the finding of a recent study from the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center at the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California. The scientists said that the fruit’s compounds “aid in fat burning and stabilizing blood sugar and insulin levels.”
Getting that blood sugar stabilization right before a meal would certainly curb hunger and force you to eat less at that meal; however, a low-cal salad with vinegar dressing would no doubt accomplish the same thing with fewer carbs. As it happens, the grapefruit also has other amazing benefits.
A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that eating one grapefruit a day can help lower low-density lipoproteins, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, by almost 16 percent. The researchers noted, however, that grapefruit does increase the potency of some drugs, so ask your doctor before diving in with your serrated spoon.
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