I think I may have finally found the answer!

I was doing research today about various foods and diets and I came across an article about foods with "negative calories". Upon further investigation this is what I found:

Apparently there is a list out there of 100 foods that your body uses more energy to burn than is actually contained in the food itself. This means that by eating this food you actually end up burning more calories than if you hadn't eaten it! Yes, the food contains calories but you burn them off!

The list of foods includes fruits like apples, blueberries, grapefruit, honeydew, mango, pineapple, raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, etc. And veggies like asparagus, broccoli, carrots, green beans, zucchini, and more!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!

I thought that pineapple and carrots (among many others) had quite a bit more calories than most other fruits and vegetables.....I would never count those foods as zero or negative calories....

~H~

But foods like that are harder for your body to break down. This causes your body to work harder to digest them, ultimately leading to a negative calorie effect!

That's what I've read, and I've done research on if it's false and nobody can give me proof it's not true... there are only people who don't believe it (and not many of them). But there are studies that prove that it is true! I wouldn't have believed it either before I read about this study...

it IS true, there are some food that take more energy to break down than what it in them.....but they DO still have calories, no food is a 'wonder' food that you can just eat and eat and eat. Still need to watch the calories and sugar levels and what not. I am pretty sure there are a few other threads on here about that, maybe there is more information on that.

We just had a thread about this. Most people said it's a marketing myth, but I think the consensus was it's a dubious claim at best. You should still count the calories in these things, especially the fruits, which are definitely not negative calorie (with the possible exception of grapefruit).

I agree with emily. I think this is a marketing myth.

I don't know about all of those as "negative calories" but I do believe snopes.com ...

http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery. asp

These are the foods that I snack on in between meals or supplement main meals with.  Here is the list I have:

NEGATIVE CALORIE FOODS

asparagus

beet

broccoli

green cabbage

carrot

cauliflower

celery root

celery chicory

hot chili peppers

cucumber

dandelion

endive

garden cress

garlic

green beans

zucchini

apple

cranberries

grapefruit

lemon

mango

orange

pineapple

raspberries

strawberries

tangerine

lamb's lettuce

lettuce

onion

papaya

radishes

spinach

turnip

For whatever reason I can't ever get links to work here when I copy and paste them, but this is a short and interesting video to watch on the subject. It just concerns celery though, but it is still cool to watch. Since the link won't work just copy it.

My theory from the video is it may be true from celery but not many other foods like fruit, but I am not a scientist.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/negative-ca lories/24381.html

Original Post by beckah:

For whatever reason I can't ever get links to work here when I copy and paste them

When you put the link into your comment, highlight it, and a blue paperclip should pop up at the top of the message box, next to all the other editing buttons. Click that, then paste the link into the bit that says Link URL :)

http://www.foodnetwork.com/videos/negative-ca lories/24381.html

The idea of only eating "negative calorie" food is naive.  Although some foods that are very low in calories and hard to digest may ultimately be a wash most of the food on the lists above would not fall into that category, certainly none of the fruit.  Celery video from link above.

Thanks for your help on the links I will try that next time!

An interesting article that I came across that relates to this topic:

http://www.caloriesperhour.com/tutorial_therm ic.php

"A figure of 10% is generally used to account for the thermic effect of food. This means that if you want to replace 500 calories burned through activity, you need to eat 10% more, or 550 calories. And if you eat 500 calories, 10% of them will be burned off by the thermic effect, leaving only 450.

However, most people are either unaware of the thermic effect of food or choose to ignore it, making weight loss seem just a little easier."

proud...cool site, thanks for the link!