Negative Caloire Foods?

ohmyshysamantha

I heard that there are foods that are "negative" calories, meaning they burn more calories when your digesting them then they contain. I've heard celery is one of those.

Is this even true? And if so what are some other foods like that?

shelbiejo

I've never heard of this...I'm interested to see the responses.....

loumaag

lol - Actually I think that is probably true, as far as celery goes; however, remember you are burning calories just by breathing. So, don't start counting chewing as an exercise. :laugh:

fallonrhea

There are 0 calorie "Miracle Noodles" - they're noodles made of glucomannan, or yam flour They're actually pretty great!

TheBrolympus

from Wikipedia:

A negative calorie food is a food that is purported to require more food energy to be digested than it provides. That is, its thermic effect is greater than its food energy content.

While this concept is popular in dieting guides, there is no scientific evidence that any of the foods claimed as negative calorie foods are such.Foods that are claimed to be negative in calories are mostly low-calorie fruits and vegetables such as grapefruit, lemon, lime, apple, lettuce, celery, broccoli and cabbage. Celery, a commonly cited negative calorie food, actually requires only about 10% of its food energy content to be digested (due to the thermic effect). Zero-calorie beverages, such as water, do take more than zero calories to process within the body, however they do not offer the dietary sustenance that other so-called negative calorie foods do in the form of fiber, carbohydrates, vitamins, etc. and as such, are not generally regarded as being negative calorie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_calorie_food

AmyFett

celery and lettuce take more calories to digest than they have in them

flajocar

I love apples for their negative calories and the added side benefit of curing my heartburn. I eat at least one a day and heartburn is gone.

wildwhisper96

OKAY. A calorie is a calories is a calorie. Whether it's 5 or 100. Yes, digesting takes calories but so does every other organ function. That's what your BMR is for.

I'd still count them.

wftiger

No such thing. All foods have calories so it can't be negative. I understand the concept just think people need to stop searching for the pot of gold that doesn't exist.

Athijade

Myth... at least when it comes to dieting. The amount of calories that it takes to digest these foods is no where near enough to make a difference in overall metabolic rate or calorie deficit. If you ate enough of these foods, you would still gain weight.

wolfchild59

Just a myth: http://www.answerfitness.com/269/negative-calorie-foods-fact-fiction/

An excerpt from the above link:

Is Celery Really a Negative Calorie Food?
While the list of negative calorie foods has ballooned to include everything from beets to strawberries and mangoes (yes, I’m being serious here), celery is the most commonly cited negative calorie food.

From a nutritional standpoint, celery is pretty much empty. It’s basically made up of water, sodium, some trace minerals and something called cellulose — which is a form of vegetable fiber than the human body cannot digest. It contains no protein or fat and marginal carbohydrates. Any other nutrition in celery is in the form of vitamins, minerals and enzymes, which contain no calories.

In fact, aside from iceberg lettuce and cucumbers, you probably couldn’t find a less nutritious, lower-calorie vegetable to eat. These foods are already about as close as you can get to eating zero calories. Close, but not quite, as we’ll see in a moment.

A large, stalk of celery weighing in at 2.2 ounces contains only nine calories. Negative calorie diet advocates claim that the mere process of chewing and digesting celery requires an expenditure of energy that exceeds the 9 calories present in the celery. Therefore, the argument goes, celery has “negative calories.”

Again, this all sounds good in theory, but what about in practice?

Issues with the Negative Calorie Foods Theory
There are some flaws with the negative calorie food theory, however.

First, the reason that certain foods like celery are already low in calories is exactly because of their high-non-caloric nutritional content. The fact that cellulose, water and minerals like sodium contain no calories is already figured into the food’s caloric-content. That’s why it has minimal calories in the first place. Negative food advocates want to double-dip here, and have you believe that the non-caloric nutrients like cellulose lower its effective calorie levels even more, but that’s just not how it works. This is already baked-in.

Second, the whole argument that the body burns more calories chewing and digesting negative calorie foods like celery is also suspect.

Yes, the body does expend a certain amount of energy to digest food, but that expenditure — even with foods that contain a high-percentage of non-caloric nutrients like cellulose — is actually fairly minimal.

Typically, the body will expend 10 - 15 percent of the calories you consume each day to fuel digestion. Let’s just throw the negative calorie food gurus a bone and say that for foods that are rich in non-digestible nutrients like cellulose, that number is actually as high as 50 percent of calories consumed (I have no evidence for this claim — I’m just being generous to prove a point.)

In the case of celery — the poster child of all negative calorie foods – you would be burning an extra 4.5 calories per each 9 calorie, 2.2 oz serving of celery. That would put your effective net calories at 4.5 (9/50% = 4.5 calories) — hardly “negative calorie” territory.

And because the amount of energy expended on digestion of foods is always expressed as a percentage, to have a negative calorie effect, digestion would have to constitute at least 101% of the energy consumed in order to create a negative calorie environment — something which is physically impossible.

So it appears that the food that is the best candidate for qualifying as a negative calorie food — celery – can’t even hit the break-even point, let alone become “calorie-negative.”