The history of grapefruit diet: Four solved mysteries / La historia de la dieta del pomelo: Cuatro misterios resueltos

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Several decades ago, grapefruit diet, or 18-day diet, appeared as a hypothetic treatment to help in theweight loss being this citric fruit the key in the dietplanning program. Objectives: This review assessed the nutrition and thehistory to discover when the diet appeared, who had thisidea, what energetic and nutritional value and how to act inthe hypothetic reduction of body weight. Methods: A review was carried out in the PubMed, GoogleScholar, and Web of Knowledge and a comprehensive searchof the ‘grey’ literature. Results: The reviewed information could indicate that thisdiet was promoted by the food and cinema industry and extended intentionally or unintentionally by Ethel Barrymorefrom the beginning of 1920s, being a lowcalorie treatmentwhere probably grapefruit has nothing to do with that weightloss. Furthermore, details of menu planning were not entirelyuniform and varied with the consulted literature becausethere is no book or pamphlet about the original diet. Conclusions: Our review solved the mystery about grape fruit diet with a historical nutritional viewpoint.(AU)