Superfood of the Week: Health Benefits of Grapefruit

Nothing is better than a grapefruit to jumpstart your day with breakfast in the morning. Like other citrus fruits, grapefruits are packed with nutrients making it this week’s superfood of the week.

Grapefruits contain numerous amounts of nutrients that provide a wide array of health benefits including:

Vitamin C

This vitamin helps to enhance iron absorption, speed wound healing, and boost immune function.

Soluble Fiber

Grapefruit contains the soluble fiber, pectin which helps to lower blood cholesterol and helps to stabilize glucose levels.

Potassium

Grapefruit contains high levels of potassium, a key nutrient in keeping blood pressure under control.

Lycopene

This powerful antioxidant helps to scavenge free radicals which can lead to cancer, heart disease, and macular degeneration. The rich pink and red colors of grapefruit are due to the lycopene content.

Does the Grapefruit diet work?

In the past, the grapefruit diet has hit the headlines as a way to lose weight quickly. The diet claims that when consumed with protein, it theoretically causes fat burning. The fad diet consisting of 800-1000 calories claimed to help you lose up to 10 lbs in 12 days without any starvation.

Yes, the grapefruit is a wonderful fruit, low in calories and fat. The reason you lose weight on the grapefruit diet is simply because it is a very low calorie diet--there is nothing magical about the grapefruit that melts fat away.  This is just not the way to lose weight. Plus, with such a rapid weight loss, you’ll mostly lose fluid, not fat. Basically, this means that when you go back to eating more than just mostly grapefruit, you will gain all the weight you lost back. Instead of trying to follow this low carbohydrate diet, just include grapefruit as part of a balanced diet!