Your mother or grandmother may have tried the Grapefruit Diet at some point in her life.  A version of it can be traced back to the 1930s, when it was also referred to by its more glamorous name, The Hollywood Diet.  A version of it was given the name The Mayo Clinic diet a decade later, but don’t be fooled; The Mayo Clinic in no way endorses this diet. 

Today, there are a few varieties of the diet floating around, but the basic menu consists of three meals a day—all of which include either ½ grapefruit,  8 U.S. ounces (8.33 U.K. ounces) of unsweetened grapefruit juice, or grapefruit pills or capsules—and an after-dinner snack of skim milk or tomato juice.  It is by no means a low-fat diet.  A typical breakfast can consist of two eggs with a couple of slices of bacon, along with the grapefruit.  You can dump half a bottle of salad dressing on your noontime salad if you like, and the quantity of meat allowed on this diet is also unlimited.   Go ahead and fry it up if you wish; there’s no restriction. 

This diet may well have been the predecessor of the low-carb diets that have gained such popularity in recent years.  Like the cabbage diet, it promises substantial weight loss to those who can manage to endure its rigid guidelines for the required time frame, which is twelve days for grapefruit diet.  And like the cabbage diet, the weight loss will occur because it, too, is a severely calorie-restricted plan.  The dieter will be consuming less than 1,000 calories a day with most of this diet’s versions—again, not enough to nourish the body—and will gain the weight (water) back soon after the diet ends. 

Beyond that, grapefruit juice may react adversely with some common medications, including high cholesterol medications, birth control pills, and antihistamines.  All this is not to discount the fact that the grapefruit itself is a healthy, nutrient-dense, high-fiber food.  It just doesn’t have the mysterious, fat-burning power that the grapefruit diet advocates would have you believe.