I received a spam email recently from Alan Craig about the miracle of negative calorie foods. He promised to speed up my metabolism and help me lose 7 kilos in 7 days. Yet Alan must be on holidays, because he still hasn’t got back to me with the scientific evidence I requested to back up his claims. While I’m waiting to hear back (and I won’t hold my breath), let’s take a closer look at this concept of negative calorie foods.
The theory is that some foods are so low in calories that simply digesting them burns more calories than they contain. For example, eating 100 grams of celery would give you 6 calories, but chewing and digestion uses around 8 – 10 calories, so your body needs stored fuel to make up the difference. Other negative calorie foods include water rich vegetables such as asparagus, cabbage, lettuce, fennel, zucchini, broccoli, leek, cauliflower, radish, spinach and cucumber.
This food myth has lingered on for many years because there is a mixture of fact and fiction. There is no magic or fat burning secret that you have been missing out on all these years. There’s no doubt that eating lots of low-calorie, high-fiber vegetables instead of biscuits, chocolate, white bread and cake will help you get results. But digesting and absorbing food uses up around 10% of your total calorie intake each day. It’s called thermic effect of food, and your body has already been burning off calories for you in this way since the day you were born. There’s no weight loss secret here (although I doubt our friendly spammer Alan would admit it).
Have you ever tried a negative calorie food diet? What other weight loss myths just won’t go away?
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