Is Grapefruit a Healthy Food?

Since more and more people have become concerned with what they eat, trying to live a healthy life and to cook exclusively healthy eating recipes, such questions are now habitual. We want to know what makes each food a healthy one, we want to see if we can make it part of our diet or we should leave it out and eat in only now and then. Grapefruit is one of the most contested fruits and this is probably the consequence of the grapefruit diet which made so many people get sick and not lose the weight they hoped to get rid of.

Grapefruits are indeed healthy foods because they contain a lot of vitamin C, which is a powerful antioxidant. Yet, you need to bear in mind that people who suffer from stomach ailments may suffer from the high acidity, therefore they should restrict such acid foods from their diet. What's healthy for the healthy could be true poison for the sick, therefore if you suffer from some conditions, your healthy eating will have to be adapted to your specific needs, if you want to avoid food intolerance or other unpleasant reactions that may occur.

Grapefruit Interactions with Drugs

Many people would think that a diet which allows you to eat various foods with the only restriction that you have to eat half fruit after each meal is a healthy one, and that it is safe to lose weight this way. Those would be diets that work without triggering health-related consequences.

At first sight, this weight loss method really sounds healthy, and if we think that the grapefruit diet dates back from the 1930s, then we may think that it has to be something good about it.

What you may not know is that the real reason why the grapefruit diet works is not the magic compound in the grapefruits which helps the body burn fat, but the restriction of the daily calories consumption to about 800, which is lower than the average need of an adult person.

Recently, scientists discovered that actually the grapefruit juice interacts with a series of drugs, thus causing troubles to the patients who ingested such drugs on daily basis, due to their chronic diseases.

This is a list of drugs which are known to interact with the grapefruit juice, leading to unpredictable effects:

• Antihistamines (anti allergy medication): Ebastine, Seldane (terfenadine, taken off the U.S. market)
• Anti-HIV medication : saquinavir (Invirase)
• Antiarrhythmics (anti heart arrhythmia): amiodarone (Cordarone)
• Calcium Channel Blockers (Blood Pressure Decreasing Drugs): nimodipine (Nimotop), Felodipine (Nitrendipine, Plendil), Pranidipine, nisoldipine (Sular), nicardipine (Cardene), verapamil (Verelan)
• Statins (Cholesterol Reduction Drugs): lovastatin (Mevacor), atorvastatin (Lipitor), Simvastatin (Zocor), simvastatin/ezetimibe (Vytorin)
• Impotence Drug (erectile dysfunction): sildenafil (Viagra)
• Immune Suppressants: cyclosporine (Neoral), (tacrolimus) Prograf
• Pain Medications: Methadone
• Psychiatric Medications: buspirone (Buspar), triazolam (Halcion), carbamazepine (Tegretol), diazepam (Valium), midazolam (Versed), sertraline (Zoloft)

(Source: MedicineNet.com)

As you can see, there are a lot of classes of drugs which interfere with the grapefruit juice, and they treat serious ailments, so you shouldn't ignore them if you think to try the grapefruit diet to lose a few pounds.

To give you only one example, there's been this study, where people in a tests group were given grapefruit juice in combination with felodipine (Plendil), while the control groups received orange juice and FC-free grapefruit juice.
FC stands for furanocoumarins, which were believed to be the culprit in grapefruit juice, causing higher concentrations of felodipine in the blood, thus leading to severely low blood pressure. To confirm this suspicion, the scientists created FC-free grapefruit juice, and this one proven to be harmless, in the above mentioned study.

Have you ever thought that you could actually kill someone with grapefruit juice?

Who Shouldn't Follow The Grapefruit Diet

As you've seen, the Grapefruit diet is one on the most permissive weight loss diets, as it allows you to eat in desired quantities, provided that you keep the number of meals at 3 per day and you eat half grapefruit at each of those meals. This is quite simple, and it can guarantee you that you'd get rid of at least 10 pounds at the end of 18 days of diet.
Does it sound reasonable for you? If it does, take into consideration two small facts about grapefruits:

1. Grapefruits belong to the citric family, and they are acid foods. Acid foods may attack the stomach walls, leading to gastritis or even more severe conditions like ulcer. Note also the once you got an ulcer, you'd have to completely change your lifestyle, because your nutritional rules will become so strict, that you'd be sorry you did such a foolish thing like harming your health for a few pounds less.
2. Grapefruits are known to interact with certain substances used in drugs, like felodipine. This is the active component of a series of heart medication, therefore if you mix grapefruit with such pills, they won't have the expected effects anymore, leading you in trouble. Heart failure is serious, I think everybody is aware of that. Is it worth dying slim?
3. I've encountered some specialist opinions that grapefruit inhibits the insulin production of the pancreas. If you are in good health, this won't probably cause you any harm, but if you already suffer from diabetes, you may even get into coma because if your insulin level decreases suddenly, the body would react in a very violent way and you'll end up by seriously dis-balancing your disease. Repeated dis-balances of an ailment like diabetes will have effects upon many organs in your body, like the legs and the eyes. Would you rather lose weight and go blind or stay chubby and see the surrounding world?

As a conclusion, anybody who knows himself to be suffering from any medical condition should seek for his doctor's consent prior to attempting the grapefruit diet. Who said fruits can't kill?

Why The Grapefruit Diet Works

You've probably read a lot about the Grapefruit Diet. First known as the Hollywood diet, it knew many variations across time, but all of them had in common the fact that you had to eat 1/2 grapefruit at each meal, three times a day, for either 12 or 18 days.

Grapefruits were believed to have fat-burning properties, due to an enzyme which was activated in the body, in case of regular consumption of the fruit over a longer period of time. Although there hasn't been a scientific proof for this fact, there are many testimonials coming from people who claim that the grapefruit diet works.

What is then the mystery which makes it function, if it is not that secret enzyme? Well, one of this diet's particularities was that you were not allowed to eat more than 3 meals per day, with nothing in between, no snacks, no cookies, nothing. Besides, all the variants of this fad diet offer the body an average of 800 calories daily. This is a very low amount, taking into consideration that the basal metabolic rate for women aged 30, with a weight of 120 pounds averages a bit over 1000 calories. Les than this will result in losing weight, because the body would take the supplement of energy needed from the stored body fat.

Lopgic says that in this case, even without any special workourts or any other physical activities, the grapefruit diet gives results. Not because of the grapefruit, but who cares, since it works?

Grapefruit Diet Dangers

If you are trying to lose some weight, you may already be aware of the grapefruit diet. Perhaps you have even tried it with more or less success in your attempt to lose a few pounds to fit in your best party dress ever, or for looking better on the beach, or even for your wedding day.

Despite the fact that science hasn't come up with hard evidences of the grapefruit diet mechanism of action, there are testimonials from people who tried it and said it worked for them. I even know one person who kept the 18 days version of the Atkins Grapefruit diet and lost almost 10 pounds with it. It is also true that my friend is a big gourmand, and she gained back about half the pounds lost during that diet, not to mention that she is extremely sedentary: she'd rather get herself killed that go to the gym, follow some fitness programs, or at least exercise at home for a little bit every day.

What To Know When You Want To Go For The Grapefruit Diet

1. First, be aware that unlike other citric fruits, grapefruits are known for their interactions with some drugs like felodipine. In case you are under treatment for heart conditions or for diabetes, always ask your doctor for advice prior to keeping any weight loss diet, be it only a quick 3 days diet to fit in your red skirt you love so much.
2. In case of regular grapefruit consumption, the acidity levels in your stomach would increase, thus increasing the probability to get a sore stomach, gastritis or even ulcerous diseases. Should you suffer from any stomach pain, gastritis or other digestive tract ailments, it would be better for you to refrain from any acid foods like fruits in general, and grapefruits, lemons, oranges or other citrics in particular.
3. If you are in perfect health and you start the grapefruit diet, closely monitor the way you are feeling every day. At the slightest signs of troubles, tiredness, lack of energy, dizziness or similar symptoms, immediately stop the diet, before making yourself even more damage. It's better to be chubby and healthy rather than thin and suffering, don't you think so?
4. If you choose to go for the grapefruit juice instead of whole fruit pieces, don't add sugar to it. Get yourself a juicer, make fresh juice every day and drink it within half hour from the moment you squeeze the grapefruits. It is healthier to consume it fresh, rather than keeping it refrigerated for hours or even days.
5. Watch your stools. There were some persons who experienced runs in the beginning of the diet, and they wrote about their experience in discussion forums on the net. This is a condition that can easily become very severe, as it leads to dehydration if not treated quickly.

All weight loss diets can be hazardous for health, so all these factors need to be considered before making any attempt to get fit by making changes in your eating habits. The grapefruit diet makes no exception.

Grapefruit Diet Scientific Studies

Grapefruit diet was one of the most popular fad diets of years 1970. At that time, the common belief was that grapefruits contained substances which helped burning the body fat, thus offering a healthy and safe diet, without the so-called yo-yo effect. This meant that once weight lost due to this diet, people won't accumulate back their pounds immediately after stopping the diet.

Yet, time has failed to prove the existence of those fat-burner enzymes in the grapefruit itself or in the grapefruit juice, therefore those persons who managed to lose weight after keeping the grqapefruit diet, got rid of their extra pounds only because they lost fluids accumulated in their bodies. Once the diet ended, fluids were again stored in the organism, thus the body weight increased.

The effects of grapefruit diet on weight loss and appetite

However, there were a few small scale studies undergone by different medical institutions, which aimed to see if there was any connection between weight loss and regular grapefruit consumption.

One of these studies was conducted by Heidi Silver, Ph.D., research assistant professor at Vanderbilt's Center for Human Nutrition, and its main objective was to determine how a diet based on grapefruit or grapefruit juice affects appetite, dietary intake, weight loss and body composition. The research was spread over a two-years period, and it included two phases: Phase 1 - recruiting members and get them to meed nutritionists who made customized diet plans for each of them, and Phase 2 - examination of the correlation between grapefruit and grapefruit juice and appetite variations.

This is how the participants were selected:

To be considered for this study, a prospective candidate must be age 21-50, have a body mass index of 30 to 39.9 (corresponding with NIH classifications for Obesity Class I and II), and must not smoke, drink alcohol or take prescription medications which have a known propensity to interact with certain bioactive compounds found in grapefruit or grapefruit juice.

This is the link to Vanderbilt's Center for Human Nutrition website, where you can read more details about this study. However, it probably hasn't ended yet, as there are no results published at this date.

So, we still have to wait before having scientific proof that the grapefruit diet works.

Grapefruit Diet Overview

Grapefruit Diet Origins

The Grapefruit Diet is a short term weight loss diet which has been known since the 1930s. Originally known as the Hollywood diet, the Grapefruit diet was wrongly attributed to the Mayo Clinic, whose doctors, in reality consider it dis-balanced and dangerous for health. So, if you hear about the Mayo Clinic Grapefruit diet, please be aware that there's no connection between those two, other than the name. Another popular reference is Atkins Grapefruit Diet, called like this because it was based on the Atkins diet principles with a twist (the addition of grapefruit in each meal).

Despite its huge popularity amongst people seeking for fast weight loss plans, schemes or diets, the person who invented the Grapefruit diet is still unknown to this day.

Grapefruit Diet Principle

The main principle of the Grapefruit diet is based on the fact that gapefruits contain a protein or an enzyme which helps burn the body fat, thus leading to a healthy, long-lasting weight loss.
In reality, the existence of this fat-burning substance has never been proven by hard evidences. However, due to the high popularity of this 12 days diet, the doctors did some studies on the relationship between grapefruit consumption and weight loss.

For instance, in the year 2004, a study done by Dr. Ken Fujioka at the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center at Scripps Clinic, was concluded with the following results: the group of subjects who ate half a grapefruit with each meal lost an average of 3.6 pounds over 12 weeks. Another group, who drank a glass of grapefruit juice with each meal lost 3.3 pounds on average, over 12 weeks. I haven't found more detailed figures, but it seems that many participants in this grapefruit diet study lost more than 10 pounds during the 3 months period of dieting.

The Grapefruit Diet Plan

Originally, the Grapefruit diet was known under a few selling lines such as "grapefruit diet plan lose 10 pounds in 10 days" or "grapefruit diet plan lose 5 pounds in 5 days", and the main by line meant to enhance the motivation of fat people willing to lose weight with this diet was "there might not be any weight loss the first 4 days, but on the 5th day, 5 pounds would be gone".

The main rules of the grapefruit diat were:

1. To eat one half of grapefruit after each meal
2. To eat only three meals a day
3. To refrain from eating snacks between the main meals

This regime is supposed to be respected for either 12 days or 18 days (I've encountered both indications on various fitness and nutrition sources, so I feel like quoting both variants of the diet plan).

Be it that you choose the 12day grapefruit diet or the 18 days grapefruit diet plan, or you simply opt for a grapefruit diet menu, never forget to ask the advice of your physician or of your nutritionist, because he is the only one who knows your body, your diseases, your predispositions, so he is the person entitled to prescribe you a rapid weight loss diet, to set up a daily diet plan tailored especially for your needs, and to indicate whether or not you'd benefit from following for a while the grapefruit diet.