Eating a high-fat diet? Turns out there’s a new way to make you even skinnier–by using something you’d never expect.
According to a new study in PLOS One, mice who ate a high-fat diet supplemented with no-pulp grapefruit juice lost 18 percent more weight than mice who simply drank water. Doing so also lowered their blood glucose levels–something that could also lower the risk of diabetes.
For researcher Dr. Andreas Stahl, the news is encouraging.
“Obesity and insulin resistance are such huge problems in our society,” says Stahl, an associate professor at the University of California. “These results do not prove humans will benefit in the same manner, the new data provide impetus to carry out more studies.”
In the study, Stahl divided a group of laboratory mice into six groups, having each group consume a diet supplement with different concentrations of grapefruit juice. The juice was watered down to see how the mice reacted to different concentrations of it, something Stahl suspected would change based on dosage. In turn, the mice also ate a steady diet containing either 60 percent or 10 percent fat.
For the next 100 days, the mice ate these diets while consuming different concentrations of juice and water–to surprising results. For the mice that ate a high-fat diet while consuming a diluted form form of grapefruit juice, they lost 18 percent more weight than their counterparts, regardless of how much fat they ate.
In addition, their blood glucose decreased by as much as 17 percent–a reaction that some researchers say was just as effective as metformin, a commonly prescribed diabetes drug.
“The grapefruit juice lowered blood glucose to the same degree as metformin,” says Dr. Joseph Napoli, a UC Berkeley professor and chair of nutritional sciences and toxicology. “That means a natural fruit drink lowered glucose levels as effectively as a prescription drug. [The] results show that grapefruits might actually do something special when it comes to diabetes.”
And evidently, it could do something special for weight loss as well.
What You Should Do
While you shouldn’t expect any miracles from grapefruit juice, research now suggests it could enhance weight loss–if you’re eating a high-fat diet, that is. To get slimmer, try adding four glasses of grapefruit juice to breakfast as an easy way to boost fat loss, the equivalent used in the study.
“The amount of grapefruit juice [we] gave the mice would be equivalent to about four cups a day for people which is very high,” say researchers.
However, health experts urge diabetics not to take the research to heart just yet–research is still pending on its effects on blood glucose for human consumers.
Readers: Have you tried eating grapefruit to lose weight before?
Sources:
Eating a High Fat Diet? Grapefruit Juice May Help You Lose More Weight and Decrease Blood Sugar – MedicalDaily.com
Grapefruit Juice May Be as Effective as Diabetes Drugs – TIME.com
