Orange Juice's Rival: The Grapefruit

Grapefruit juice is the morning rival to orange juice. It's packed with potassium, Vitamin A and C, it's a healthy choice among other citrus morning beverages. Grapefruit technically isn't a negative-calorie food, but it's still fairly low in calories, delivering only 74 calories per cup.  Grapefruit contains naringenin, an antioxidant derived from the bitter flavor of grapefruits, which triggers the liver to break down fat.

While grapefruits, oranges, and tangerines are teaming with this great immune enhancing vitamin – Vitamin C is not their only benefit.  These fruits are also packed with flavonoids, natural chemical compounds that stimulate the immune system. 

Researchers at UC Berkeley found that mice on a high-fat diet that drank sweetened grapefruit juice gained less weight than other mice that drank sweetened water. After 100 days, the juice-drinking mice weighed 18.4 percent less than the other mice, and they had better metabolic health (better blood-sugar levels and insulin sensitivity). Results only occurred with a high-fat diet.

Grapefruit Juice and Your Medication

But if you take certain medications, grapefruit juice can do more harm than good. Drink grapefruit juice or eating a grapefruit can severely affect the way certain medications both prescription and over-the-counter get metabolized in the system. It can cause them to accumulate at harmful levels in your body. This mainly involves a class of drugs called Statins, which drugs created to lower cholesterol.

This danger exists for a full 24 hours so even if you're not washing down your meds with a glass of grapefruit juice, you should still use caution. Grapefruit juice can also have the opposite effect causing the body to absorb too little of the medication. 

The FDA warns that if the medication labels call to avoid grapefruit juice, patients should also avoid seville oranges and tangelos. Consult with your pharmacist or physician.