Negative Calorie Foods

Have I mentioned before that we have a wedding coming up?  My little sister is getting married!  3/4 of our family is in the wedding too, so naturally we all are wanting to look GOOD these days.  Having an upcoming event really makes it easy to watch your diet and get some exercise.  I wish everyday life was enough of an “event” to make me conscious of those things all the time.  I wonder how some of us do that?

So I’ve been really concentrating on my intake lately.  Remember, I still don’t have a scale so I don’t really know how I’m doing.  But my clothes are fitting great and I’ve been getting some exercise and making good food choices.  For example, Tuesday night I met with JD (you all remember him, right?) for dinner.  We went to one of the newest restaurants in Salem that everyone is talking about.  They call it a bistro, but I think it’s actually one (maybe two) steps up from a greasy spoon.  Anyway, when JD and I go out it’s usually an excuse for me to eat whatever I want.  But on this occasion, I chose a really yummy bruschetta appetizer and a chopped chicken salad.  Then after dinner, we headed over to Bush Park and walked two laps (about 2.5 miles).  I hadn’t had any exercise that day and I was still sore from my race on the previous day so the walk (and the talk) felt really good.  It was a great evening.

2 Negative Calorie Foods?

But back to my food intake.  I’ve been thinking about food a lot lately.  Looking in the cupboards for something sweet, fatty, or carby and realizing that I don’t need to eat it and then reaching for a piece of fruit, cheese, or yogurt instead.  And it’s been easy.  Then, as I was contemplating my next few blog posts, I stumbled on a list of drafts that haven’t been finished yet and I found one on negative calorie foods.  Great!  this fits in with what’s on my mind right now regarding dieting, exercising, and looking your best for a really important event.

So what is a “negative calorie food”?  Well first, let’s start off by saying that some nutritionists don’t actually believe in them while others do.  Theoretically, a negative calorie food is one that takes more calories to digest than can be found in the food itself.  The most commonly referred to one is celery.  After all, celery is basically fiber, water, and maybe a few vitamins and minerals.  According to the USDA, 1 cup of celery contains approximately 16 calories of energy.  In order for celery to be a negative calorie food, your body would have to burn more than 16 calories (or burn less but not extract all the energy from) while digesting that celery.  Sounds great, right?  You ingest calories but still have a negative calorie count for that food.

But who wants to eat celery?  Not me.  But there is some good news if you believe in all this negative calorie stuff.  There’s a bunch of so called negative calorie foods, and some of them are actually pretty tasty.  I’m not actually sure that I buy into the fact that they are negative calorie.  Low calorie sure, but negative, I don’t know.  Here are just a few:

• Celery
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Hot Chilis
• Lettuce
• Tomato

Here’s a more complete list for you to check out if you’d like.

Like I said earlier, some nutritionists don’t actually believe that negative calorie foods exist.  And generally, I’m pretty much a skeptic as well.  A 2008 article on Time.com suggests that there are no negative calorie foods.  Even good old celery has a positive calorie count according to them.  The article suggested that in terms of caloric expenditures, the act of eating and digesting these foods just can’t cancel out the amount of calories that they contain–even if it is a small number.

Whatever your thoughts on negative calorie foods, if you’re trying to lose weight, you should probably be eating more foods from the above list than Snickers bars.  If only there was a way to make a negative calorie Snickers.