Grapefruit Juice May Be As Effective as Diabetes Drugs

A new mice study suggests that grapefruit juice might be just as effective as the type 2 diabetes drug, metformin, at lowering blood glucose. The research, which was funded by the California Grapefruit Growers Cooperative, was published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

Regarding the funding, study co-author Joseph Napoli, PhD, professor and chair of nutritional sciences and toxicology at the University of California, Berkeley, said this: “I understand the skepticism.” But the funders had nothing to do with the experiment, he says, besides providing some money and grapefruits. “We were very clear in telling them, you’re going to get the data we get,” Napoli says. “We can’t guarantee you’re going to like what you see. It might be nothing.”

What they found was not nothing.

The researchers fed different groups of mice a range of liquids: sweetened diluted grapefruit juice, sweetened water, and water that contained metformin, a diabetes…