Is Grapefruit Juice Good for Weight Loss After All?

Just like every other fad diet, we’ve written off the Grapefruit Diet — which claims that the enzymes in grapefruit actually help your body burn fat — as a useless waste of time. No, there are no citrus fruits with magical fat-scorching capabilities (sorry!). But new research suggests that grapefruit may indeed hold some weight loss powers.An October 2013 study from UC Berkeley published on PLOS ONE found that grapefruit juice helped mice on a high-fat diet stave off weight gain. Researchers fed mice a high-fat diet and either diluted grapefruit juice or water (with added glucose and artificial sweeteners to match the grapefruit’s calorie and saccharin content). At the end of the study, they found that the mice drinking the juice gained 18 percent less weight than those who were just sipping on H2O. Plus, the mice drinking grapfruit juice showed a decrease in blood glucose levels and insulin levels—an important thing for avoiding type 2 diabetes. Researchers even gave one group of mice a glucose-lowering drug commonly prescribed to people with type 2 diabetes, and drinking grapefruit juice was able to lower their glucose by levels the same amount.Although it’s far from conclusive, the results suggest that something in the grapfruit juice was able to make a difference. For now, we’ll be grabbing a few more grapefruits at the grocery store — just in case — as we wait for the next round of studies to come out.