negative calorie foods?

A

Andy741

New Member
I was reading that some foods may take more calories to digest than they contain making them a negative calorie food. Is there any truth to that?

Thanks
 
It's called thermogenesis.

Protein is more thermogenic than sugar and fat. Fat is the less thermogenic macronutrient of the three. Fiber cans also reduce the total amount of effective calories. Cold water (and cold food in general) too.

Some subtract the amount of fiber (in grams) to the amount of carbs (in grams) to get the total amount of "effective" calories. Now, this is a pretty tedious thing to do, and it might not even make a real difference in the end.

So... Yes, consuming high protein and high fiber food will reduce your total "effective" caloric intake -- that is if you compare that diet (high in fiber and protein) to a diet which is poor in fiber, with a lot of fat and quick sugars, and not as much protein.

For more details, I'd say : ask Aaron or Bryan.

There are some threads on the subject.

As for negative calorie foods... I don't know.

Hope that helps.
 
these articles should adequately address your burning question:

[b said:
Quote[/b] (http://www.howstuffworks.com/question447.htm @ ?)]
Does drinking ice water burn calories?

For anyone trying to lose weight,this question is an exciting one! If you simply want to know if your body burns calories warming up the water, the answer is yes. But if you want to know if drinking a lot of ice water can help you lose weight, or keep weight off, this "yes" needs to be qualified with some calculations.
First of all, calories are case-sensitive. There are calories and then there are Calories. Calories with a big "c" are the ones used to describe the amount of energy contained in foods. A calorie with a little "c" is defined as the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water 1 degree Celsius. What most people think of as a Calorie is actually a kilo-calorie: It takes one Calorie to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius. So when you drink a 140-Calorie can of cola, you are ingesting 140,000 calories. There is no cause for alarm, because the conversion applies across the board. When you burn 100 Calories jogging a mile, you are burning 100,000 calories.
So, considering that the definition of a calorie is based on raising the temperature of water, it is safe to say that your body burns calories when it has to raise the temperature of ice water to your body temperature. And unless your urine is coming out ice cold, your body must be raising the temperature of the water. So calories are being burned.
Let's figure out exactly what you're burning when you drink a 16-ounce (0.5 liter) glass of ice water:
The temperature of ice water can be estimated at zero degrees Celsius.
Body temperature can be estimated at 37 degrees Celsius.
It takes 1 calorie to raise 1 gram (0.0352 ounces) of water 1 degree Celsius.
There are 454.56 grams in 16 ounces of water.
So in the case of a 16-ounce glass of ice water, your body must raise the temperature of 454.56 grams of water from zero to 37 degrees C. In doing so, your body burns 16,819 calories. But that's calories with a little "c." Your body only burns 17 Calories, and in the grand scheme of a 2,000-Calorie diet, that 17 isn't very significant.
But let's say you adhere to the "eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day" nutritional recommendation. In 64 ounces of water, there are 1,818.24 grams. So to warm up all that water, in the course of a day, your body burns 67,275 calories, or 67 Calories. And over time, that 67 Calories a day adds up. So, while you definitely shouldn't depend on ice water consumption to replace exercise or a healthy diet, drinking cold water instead of warm water does, in fact, burn some extra Calories!
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[b said:
Quote[/b] (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040507.html @ May 7 2004)]
Does chewing celery consume more calories than it provides?
Dear Cecil:

A friend of mine told me that if I wanted a low calorie snack, I should eat celery because it actually has negative calories. He claimed this meant that I would burn more calories chewing and digesting the celery than I would actually get from it. Is what he claims true? Are there any other negative-calorie foods? Oh, and you wouldn't happen to know a good low calorie dip for the celery, would you? Christopher Moore, via the Internet
Cecil replies:
Cecil has been hearing this for years, and for just as long has been disinclined to believe it. Nosing about on the Web, however, I started to wonder. As you might expect, you find quite a few hucksters touting the benefits of alleged "negative calorie" foods, including not just celery but asparagus, broccoli, lettuce, grapefruit, and a long list of other fruits and vegetables and for a small fee these helpful folks will reveal to you their foolproof fat-burning diet plans. More scientifically minded parties dismiss these schemes, but tend to do so in such sniffy terms that one suspects they haven't really considered the question of negative-calorie foods on its merits. Moreover, one usually reliable source, the Urban Legends Reference Pages at www.snopes.com, says that while the negative-calorie shtick on the whole is a crock, what you've heard about celery is true. However, no corroboration of this statement is supplied.
Our mission therefore was clear: Time to conduct another experiment in the Straight Dope Kitchen of Science.
We went to the supermarket and bought a bunch, cluster, mess, or whatever-you-call-it of celery packaged by A. Duda & Sons in Salinas, California. Having returned home and trimmed off the unpalatable parts, we weighed the remainder one stalk at a time on our Cuisinart precision portion scale 757 grams total. (The scale lets you figure it in ounces too, but we're great believers in the metric system, and besides, "grams" will look classier when our report is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.) Further research revealed that celery contains about 14 kilocalories (what you layfolk call just plain "calories") per 100 grams, so we were looking at 106 calories' worth of the vegetable.
We then commenced a rigorous regimen of celery consumption. This was tougher than you might think you don't lay into a plateful of celery with the same enthusiasm you might have for an equivalent quantity of barbecued ribs. After an hour I'd eaten eight stalks. (I was interrupted a couple times, thankfully.) All things considered, I think I packed away as much of the stringy stuff as could reasonably be expected. Total consumption: 514 grams. Total calories ingested: 72.
There's no easy way to determine how much more energy you expend chewing and digesting celery than you would if you were just sitting there. However, it's fair to say that when eating celery, you're using more energy than you're taking in. Bear in mind that you burn roughly 60 calories per hour while asleep, 85 while eating, and I think this is interesting 130 while doing "computer work." (I was tapping away at the keyboard while munching my celery; obviously whoever figured these things out understands the intense concentration required to produce this column.) According to one calorie calculator I found, I need 78 calories per hour just to support my body weight. The unavoidable conclusion? If I did nothing but eat celery and write the Straight Dope all day, I'd waste away to a twig.
Does that mean there's something to this negative-calorie business? Yes and no. Some advocates expound a vague and fanciful theory that neg-cal foods ramp up your metabolism by stimulating surplus production of some sort of enzyme, the idea apparently being that you'll blast calories into the void like a Bessemer converter. This is clearly nonsense. If it were that easy, everyone would be thin already. On the other hand, the calorie content of many vegetables is pretty low. Chinese cabbage, cucumber, and lettuce are all about the same as celery; asparagus has 20 to 23 calories per 100 grams, depending on who's counting, carrots 25 to 43, broccoli 26 to 34. By contrast, even 95 percent lean hamburger has at least 170. Except at the bottom of the range you won't have a net loss of calories while eating vegetables, but you won't gain much either. On the other hand, if you start loading up your celery with peanut butter or French onion dip even no-fat dips run about 25 calories per two-tablespoon serving (oops, 30-milliliter serving), which where I come from might get you through one stalk sorry, pal, all bets are off.
CECIL ADAMS
Click to expand...
 
Nice Info BP,

I know a lot of people subtract 5 to 10% from their Kcal, for digestion (thermogenics). But I honestly feel it trivial and banal. It's a whole lot easier to go walk around your yard and burn more than that measly 5 to 10%.
 
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