Quote:
Originally Posted by astra
Cabbage, Celery are the two examples I remember. When you eat them, you spend more calories to digest them than they bring in.
For example if you eat Cabbage 200 kcal, you are going to spend 300 kcal to digest it.
If you eat cake 200 kcal, you are going so spend only 100 kcal to digest it, the rest...is fat  |
Largely an urban myth.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...896346,00.html
I do take one of the only negative calorie foods I know about. Well, actually, it's a drink.
Chilled Coke Zero. A 330ml can contains 1.5kJ. To warm the drink up to body temperature from fridge temperature (say to 37C from 7C) takes 9.9kJ. So it uses about six times as much energy to warm it to body temperature as you get from digesting it. This means that drinking a 330ml can makes you lose almost 9kJ. Wooo — a whole 3 calories.
Whereas, a stick of celery contains about 10 calories. I suppose if you ate a stick straight from the fridge, you might use up a few of those calories warming the celery to body temperature. And use maybe 10-20% more digesting it. But it's unlikely to end up negative.
Of course, one big advantage of celery and other high-cellulose, high-fibre foods is that they make you feel full, but have few calories. But negative calories? No.
At the other end of the scale, there are very high calorie foods. Salted roasted peanuts? About 6 calories per gram. That's just two peanuts!
I find it easier to not worry too much about it, but to just eat slightly less than I used to do of the same foods.