Grapefruit Diet

As readers will know, I am not a fan of fad diet, crash diets nor phony diets. The “grapefruit diet” in my opinion fits into all three of these definitions. Now this is not to say that I think eating grapefruit is a waste of time. On the contrary I believe that we can positively influence our health by consuming more fruits and vegetables as part of our diet. Eating grapefruit is both great for our bodies as well as a great tasting fruit. Today I want to discuss the health benefits of grapefruit, specifically their nutritional composition, rather than the weight loss that can be obtained by going on the “grapefruit diet”.

The United States Department of Agrculture (USDA) maintains a database containing a wide variety of food nutrient values. The nutritional information that follows is for Florida pink grapefruit. If you want to see the complete nutritional information, follow this link.

Important nutritional values contained in 1/2 a Florida pink grapefruit

• Energy 37 kcal
• Fiber 1.4 g
• Vitamin A 319 µg
• Vitamin C 45.5 mg

It is important to remember that these figures come from just half a Florida pink grapefruit. Obviously eating a whole one means we would simply double the values. But what exactly do these numbers represent?

Firstly the Energy value is the number of calories. I do not count calories myself. Rather I simply concentrate on trying to eat greater quantities of nutrient dense foods as opposed to junk food. That said, I am partial to chocolate biscuits. Anyway for people that do concern themselves with calorie values, you will see that grapefruit are a low calorie food.

I shall relate the other figures to their respective Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA). Figures obtained from Wikipedia.

Eating just half a grapefruit provides us with 1.4 g of fiber. The RDA for a man is 38 g. So we can see that a grapefruit or two for breakfast is a good start potentially giving us about 10% of our daily fiber requirement.

As for Vitamin A, the RDA is 900 µg. Half a grapefruit gives is a 1/3 of this. A whole pink Florida grapefruit would provide 2/3. Regarding Vitamin C, the RDA is 90 mg. As we can see from the figures above, eating a whole grapefruit would give us 91 mg providing us with our Vitamin C requirements for the day.

Personally I look at RDAs as minimum amounts of Vitamins and minerals that I want to be consuming. It is clear though that grapefruit really are a wonderful fruit that give my body some of the nutrients that it needs to feel alive, energetic and positive about the day ahead. The book The Grapefruit Solution featured on this site gives a further discussion of the health giving properties of grapefruit and is well worth a read. Forget the grapefruit diet and just eat grapefruit.