Jan 3, 2023 07:19 AM
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...sk/672537/
INTRO: Roughly a century ago, a new fad diet began to sweep the United States. Hollywood starlets such as Ethel Barrymore supposedly swore by it; the citrus industry hopped on board. All a figure-conscious girl had to do was eat a lot of grapefruit for a week, or two, or three.
The Grapefruit Diet, like pretty much all other fad diets, is mostly bunk. If people were losing weight with the regimen, that’s because the citrus was being recommended as part of a portion-controlled, low-calorie, low-carbohydrate diet—not because it had exceptional flab-blasting powers. And yet, the diet has survived through the decades, spawning a revival in the 1970s and ’80s, a dangerous juice-exclusive spin-off called the grapefruit fast, and even a shout-out from Weird Al; its hype still plagues nutritionists today.
But for every grapefruit evangelist, there is a critic warning of its dangers—probably one with a background in pharmacology. The fruit, for all its tastiness and dietetic appeal, has another, more sinister trait: It raises the level of dozens of FDA-approved medications in the body, and for a select few drugs, the amplification can be potent enough to trigger a life-threatening overdose.
For most people, chowing down on grapefruit is completely safe; it would take “a perfect storm” of factors—say, a vulnerable person taking an especially grapefruit-sensitive medication within a certain window of drinking a particular amount of grapefruit juice—for disaster to unfurl, says Emily Heil, an infectious-disease pharmacist at the University of Maryland. But that leaves grapefruit in a bit of a weird position. No one can agree on exactly how much the world should worry about this bittersweet treat whose chemical properties scientists still don’t fully understand... (MORE - missing details)
INTRO: Roughly a century ago, a new fad diet began to sweep the United States. Hollywood starlets such as Ethel Barrymore supposedly swore by it; the citrus industry hopped on board. All a figure-conscious girl had to do was eat a lot of grapefruit for a week, or two, or three.
The Grapefruit Diet, like pretty much all other fad diets, is mostly bunk. If people were losing weight with the regimen, that’s because the citrus was being recommended as part of a portion-controlled, low-calorie, low-carbohydrate diet—not because it had exceptional flab-blasting powers. And yet, the diet has survived through the decades, spawning a revival in the 1970s and ’80s, a dangerous juice-exclusive spin-off called the grapefruit fast, and even a shout-out from Weird Al; its hype still plagues nutritionists today.
But for every grapefruit evangelist, there is a critic warning of its dangers—probably one with a background in pharmacology. The fruit, for all its tastiness and dietetic appeal, has another, more sinister trait: It raises the level of dozens of FDA-approved medications in the body, and for a select few drugs, the amplification can be potent enough to trigger a life-threatening overdose.
For most people, chowing down on grapefruit is completely safe; it would take “a perfect storm” of factors—say, a vulnerable person taking an especially grapefruit-sensitive medication within a certain window of drinking a particular amount of grapefruit juice—for disaster to unfurl, says Emily Heil, an infectious-disease pharmacist at the University of Maryland. But that leaves grapefruit in a bit of a weird position. No one can agree on exactly how much the world should worry about this bittersweet treat whose chemical properties scientists still don’t fully understand... (MORE - missing details)