Negative Calorie Foods: Fact or Fiction?

~Diane Cohen, Fitsmi

What if, instead of exercising and avoiding unhealthy foods, you could eat special snacks that actually help you burn calories you’ve already eaten? (If such a miracle drug exists, where is it and how can we buy it?)

Well, there are some people out there who believe there are specific foods that will cause your body to burn more calories than the snack actually contains. These foods are often called “negative calorie foods.”

Could negative calorie foods be the super secret key to losing weight? (Highly doubtful, but a girl can still hope, right?) Can celery kick-start your metabolism?

Before you start stocking up, we wanted to call these people on their BS. Let’s find out once and for all: do negative calorie foods really exist?

The fiction:

1. Negative calorie foods are super low in calories and also contain a powerful enzyme that causes your body to burn even more calories, helping you power through the calories in negative calorie foods and then some.

2. There are so few calories in negative calorie foods that the act of simply chewing and swallowing them burns the calories they contain, plus the calories from that cookie you ate an hour ago.

The facts:

1. Eating and digesting food does create an increase in your rate of metabolism, but this only accounts for 0-30% of the calories your body burns. For example celery, a popular “negative calorie food,” contains six calories but the amount of calories that get burned by the act of eating and digesting it is only half a calorie. Whoops!

2. Even if negative calorie foods burn more calories than they’re worth, you have to burn off 3,500 calories to lose a single pound of fat. So unless that celery is burning a RIDICULOUS number of calories, odds are it’s not going to make much of a difference.

Aha Moment!

Negative Calorie Foods are low on the BS meter since it has some basis in fact. But, overall, negative calorie foods are just a myth! However, if you take a look at the list of foods below that people claim are part of that group, you may notice something interesting: they’re all fruits and vegetables that are naturally low in fat and high in fiber. So then:

1. Eating these things will probably help in losing weight, whether they contain magical calorie-burning powers or not.

2. Fruits and veggies like these are also natural laxatives, which means they are easy to digest and help the body get rid of wastes.

• Asparagus
• Beet Root
• Broccoli
• Cabbage
• Carrot
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chicory
• Hot Chilies
• Cucumber
• Garden cress
• Garlic
• Green Beans
• Lettuce
• Onion
• Radish
• Spinach
• Turnip
• Zucchini
• Fruits
• Apple
• Blueberries
• Cantaloupe
• Cranberry
• Grapefruit
• Honeydew
• Lemon/Lime
• Mango
• Orange
• Papaya
• Peach
• Pineapple
• Raspberry
• Strawberry
• Tomato
• Tangerine
• Turnip
• Watermelon

What do you think? Got any other Food Myths you want to share? Leave a comment!

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