Grapefruit juice can help banish your weight woes

A new study has revealed that grapefruit juice might be the key to losing weight.

According to the study by researchers at University of California, Berkeley, mice fed a high-fat diet gained 18 percent less weight when they drank clarified, no-pulp grapefruit juice compared with a control group of mice that drank water and juice-drinking mice also showed improved levels of glucose, insulin and a type of fat called triacylglycerol compared with their water-drinking counterparts.

Lead authors of the study, Andreas Stahl and Joseph Napoli, found that Juice-drinking mice also showed improved levels of glucose, insulin and a type of fat called triacylglycerol compared with their water-drinking counterparts and that grapefruit juice lowered blood glucose to the same degree as metformin, a glucose-lowering drug often prescribed for those with Type 2 diabetes, meaning that a natural fruit drink lowered glucose levels as effectively as a prescription drug.

The group of high-fat-diet mice that received naringin, a bioactive compound in grapefruit juice that has been identified as a key agent in weight loss, had lower blood glucose levels than the control group, but there was no effect on weight, suggesting that some other ingredient in grapefruit juice is also beneficial.

The study also found that the mice that ate the high-fat diet and drank diluted grapefruit juice not only gained less weight than their control counterparts, they also had a 13 to 17 percent decrease in blood glucose levels and a threefold decrease in insulin levels, which reveals greater sensitivity to insulin. (In Type 2 diabetes, the pancreas makes extra insulin to compensate for increased resistance to the hormone.)

The study did not find as big an impact on mice that ate a low-fat diet. Those that drank the grapefruit juice saw a two-fold decrease in insulin levels, but there was no significant change in weight or other metabolic variables.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.