Promoters of the well-known grapefruit diet may have been onto something. A study published in the journal Diabetes reveals that a flavonoid derived from citrus fruit may prevent weight gain that often leads to Type 2 Diabetes.
Flavonoids are compounds made by plants to produce "yellow or red and blue pigmentation and to protect "from attack by microbes and insects," according to wikipedia.org. "Flavonoids have been referred to as 'nature's biological response modifiers' because of strong experimental evidence of their inherent ability to modify the body's reaction to allergens, viruses, and carcinogens."
That all sounds good. The study, however, looked in particular at one flavonoid called naringenin. Murray Huff of the Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario fed one group of mice a high-fat diet to induce "metabolic syndrome. A second group was fed the exact same diet and treated with naringenin," which "corrected the elevations in triglyceride and cholesterol, prevented the development of insulin resistance and completely normalized glucose metabolism."
The "marked obesity that develops in these mice was completely prevented by naringenin," said Huff, who directs the Vascular Biology Research Group at Robarts. "What was unique about the study was that the effects were independent of caloric intake, meaning the mice ate exactly the same amount of food and the same amount of fat. There was no suppression of appetite or decreased food intake, which are often the basis of strategies to reduce weight gain and its metabolic consequences."
Huff and his colleagues caution that while grapefruit has long been linked to weight loss diets, the concentrations of the citrus-derived flavonoid being studied are at higher levels than you could get from regular eating.
Photo courtesy of Combined Media via creativecommons.org.
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