Have you heard about “negative calorie foods”? Put simply, these are foods that require more work to digest than they have calories.
Before we dive into negative calorie foods, let’s take a quick refresher course on calories.
Ultimately, calories are energy, or fuel, for your body. You need calories to function. Not just to function properly, but to function – period. If you didn’t eat, you would die! Your body is continuously using or burning calories. Basic body functions like breathing and digesting food require energy (calories) to work, even when you’re asleep.
Now, back to negative calorie foods. These are mostly certain types of fruits and veggies that are usually very high in fiber and contain a low number of calories to begin with. As a result, the energy it requires for the body to break down these foods and absorb all the protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals, and then get the unused portion out of the body may be higher than the actual amount of calories in the food itself.
Everyone’s body is different so it’s tough to say exactly how many calories your body burns through digestion of these foods. Regardless, it’s so minimal that it should not be used as a weight loss plan! Eating only negative calorie foods can result in malnutrition. It is essential to have a proper diet and adequate exercise for weight loss success and good health in general.
Some examples of negative calorie foods are:
Asparagus
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Celery
Spinach
Mandarin oranges
Peaches
Clementines
Plums
Rhubarb
Guava
Honeydew
A good site to check out is the USDA’s Food Pyramid website. Under the MyPyramid Planner, you can enter your height, weight, age, gender and then a sample meal of what you would typically eat. The interactive tool will tell you if you are getting enough in the proper food categories according to the Food Pyramid.