Negative calorie foods

I have heard two sides to the story that there are negative calorie foods out there. I believe it for things like celery and brocolli that have almost no calories and are so high in fiber that they take alot of work for your body to breakdown, but what about fruits, i would think that they are too high in sugar for that to be the case and even though they are healthy are they ever really counted as zero or negative calories. If yes, what fruits and veggies are considered under that category?

The negative calorie food thing is really a big myth.  There are very low calorie foods.... like cucumber or celery.... and there are zero calorie foods like water.  If you consume fewer calories per day than you burn up then your whole day is 'negative' on the calories.  If you ate 3000 cals a day of celery and broccoli (difficult but technically possible) and you only needed 2000 cals a day to maintain your weight, you'd gain weight.   Giant Pandas made the evolutionary mistake of living on a very low calorie food (bamboo shoots) and have to eat tonnes of the stuff every day to get all the energy they need.

For calorie-counting purposes you should log everything including fruit but, in the case of the leafy vegetables and salads, you don't have to be so careful about the portion-sizes.

Original Post by gi-jane:

Giant Pandas made the evolutionary mistake of living on a very low calorie food (bamboo shoots) and have to eat tonnes of the stuff every day to get all the energy they need.

evolutionary mistake, lol!

signed formerly *r-n-j-t (remember me?)* 

Original Post by gi-jane:

The negative calorie food thing is really a big myth.  There are very low calorie foods.... like cucumber or celery.... and there are zero calorie foods like water.  If you consume fewer calories per day than you burn up then your whole day is 'negative' on the calories.  If you ate 3000 cals a day of celery and broccoli (difficult but technically possible) and you only needed 2000 cals a day to maintain your weight, you'd gain weight.   Giant Pandas made the evolutionary mistake of living on a very low calorie food (bamboo shoots) and have to eat tonnes of the stuff every day to get all the energy they need.

For calorie-counting purposes you should log everything including fruit but, in the case of the leafy vegetables and salads, you don't have to be so careful about the portion-sizes.

 Gi Jane is absolutely right. There are no negative calorie foods. Sorry.

It's just crossed my mind that maybe the OP is thinking of foods that have so few calories that actually digesting them by human system requires more energy than they deliver? Isn't there a vegetable that does precisely that?

But still, there are probably 1 or 2 of suche foods, if any, so it would be quite hard to build your diet on them

I recently watched an episode of Food Detectives in which they found celery to actually have negative calories.  So, according to them, it's possible.

So what would you say if I had eaten 3 lbs of steamed broccoli?

Borccoli isn't celery.  The only food they examined was celery. 

i saw that same eppisode, i loved it, and i thought that they pretty much proved it. That is why i was confused, because like many of the other posts have said i didn't think that it was possible.

It may well be true that the body uses that more energy processing celery than there was in the celery.   But even if it can be demonstrated scientifically I think the 'message' is that it helps weight-control if we eat plenty of low-calorie fibrous foods that take a long time to digest because they keep us feeling full for longer.    And we all knew that anyway, didn't we? 

No-one in their right mind is going to try existing on celery all day unless they have a serious eating disorder. 

Original Post by gi-jane:

It may well be true that the body uses that more energy processing celery than there was in the celery. But even if it can be demonstrated scientifically I think the 'message' is that it helps weight-control if we eat plenty of low-calorie fibrous foods that take a long time to digest because they keep us feeling full for longer. And we all knew that anyway, didn't we?

No-one in their right mind is going to try existing on celery all day unless they have a serious eating disorder.

yeah i wouldn't only cuz i hate picking the stringy parts from my teeth. couldn't imagine doing that all day. not that im in my right mind.

Yeah i know, but it makes me feel better about eating peanut butter and rasins on top if i think that maybe the celery is absorbing some of those calories :)

I'd say you need to buy more TP, quade

If it makes you feel better, carry on....  But if you really want to 'absorb' the calories you'd be better off hopping up and down on the spot while you're eating it.

Original Post by gi-jane:

If it makes you feel better, carry on.... But if you really want to 'absorb' the calories you'd be better off hopping up and down on the spot while you're eating it.

hehe...well that would also work on another level, keeping just eaten food doesn't really stay down after bouncing around the place. found that out one day after going running too soon after a meal.