Drinking grapefruit juice when eating fatty food lowers the amount of weight put on by up to a fifth, researchers claim to have discovered.
The research, conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, also suggested that grapefruit could be as good as prescription drugs at keeping blood sugar levels under control – something which is a key part of managing diabetes.
The experiments were conducted on mice, but researchers say the results justify studies on humans.
Professor Joseph Napoli, of the study team, said: ‘We see all sorts of scams about nutrition.But these results, based on controlled experiments, warrant further study of the potential health-promoting properties of grapefruit juice.'
The researchers found that when the mice were fed fatty food for three months, those given grapefruit juice to drink gained up to 18 per cent less weight than those given water.
They also had lower blood sugar and insulin levels, despite eating the same number of calories and doing the same amount of exercise as the mice who drank water.
However, the fruit juice only had an effect on weight when the animals ate fatty food.The researchers said they did not know how grapefruit stops the pounds from piling on.
The research, which has been published in the journal PLOS ONE, also found thatgrapefruit juice was as good at controlling insulin as the widely used diabetes drug metformin.
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