Grapefruit has been on dieter's list as an important help to lose weight, and their opinion is now validated by scientists.A new study suggests that drinking grapefruit juice to complement eating fatty foods decreases the amount of weight store by up to a 20 percent. An additional finding proposes that grapefruit are as good as prescription drugs at keeping blood sugar at normal levels, which is an important aspect of managing diabetes.
Conducted successfully on mice, the results are encouraging scientists to continue studies on humans.
'We see all sorts of scams about nutrition,' said Professor Joseph Napoli, of the University of California, Berkeley. 'But these results, based on controlled experiments, warrant further study of the potential health-promoting properties of grapefruit juice.'
Introduced in the 1930s, the Grapefruit Diet, also known as the Hollywood Diet, has been used by a host of celebrities, including Australia's singer Kylie Minogue. The diet consists of having grapefruit or grapefruit juice with every meal and cut down on calories.
When mice were fed fatty foods for three months, those who received grapefruit juice to drink gained up to 18 percent less weight than those who received water. Additionally, grapefruit juice drinking mice had lower blood sugar and insulin levels, even though they had the same amount of calories and exercised identically as mice that drank water.
Grapefruit juice has been known to have a good control of insulin in the form of a metformin, a diabetes drug, journal PLOS ONE reported.
