Negative Calorie Foods - Are they real?

FGR

Just a question for those in the know. Are the likes of Apples, Spinach and Chilli Peppers really that demanding on the digestive system that it burns more calories to digest what's in them?

If so, fantastic! Also..Would these be recommended as good stomach fillers or are there better alternatives?

Thanks in advance..!

Mellor

I've heard that food that are very low in calories, like celary are negitive, but I never heard apples listed as one. And judging from the amount of calories in an apple, I'd be pretty sure that they aren't negitive calories.
Chillis aren't going to have a huge amount of cals, and the rise in body temp that goes with them could very well burn them off

Khannie

Apples are definitely not going to cost more energy to digest than they contain. Celery is supposed to alright. You can more or less eat as much of some stuff as you want without really worrying about calorie content though...mushrooms and raw carrots for example. I just wouldn't bother counting the calories in them.

Frogdog

It's a complete myth. There is no such thing as a negative-calorie food.

Celery is the most common myth of all.

EileenG

There are no negative calorie foods. There are some, like celery, which have so low cal that it's hardly worth counting the amount a normal person would eat, but if you eat enough of any food, you will rack up the cals.

Apples are very deceptive. Most people think of them as a very healthy, low cal food, but most of the apples you'd buy are close to 100 cals each.

There was an interesting experiement a while ago, where they showed photographs of food to people and asked them to estimate the calories. The trick was, each photograph was of exactly 200 calories worth of food. But people consistently under-estimated the calories in what they considered healthy foods (the two apples are usually guessed as 100 cals, and sometimes as little as 50) while the "unhealthy" foods were over-estimated.

Vegeta

While not a food, what's the story with water?

Surely it contains close to if not 0 calories.

enda1

Of course the food has calories, the point the op was making/asking was about the net calorific result on the human body!

A glass of cold water, while having zero calories will have a negative net calorific value on the human because we will heat the water to body temperature.

Dolbert

I've heard that black coffee has a negative calorie effect, probably due to it being a thermogenic. Don't know how true it is though.

rubadub

Vegeta wrote: »

While not a food, what's the story with water?

Surely it contains close to if not 0 calories.

0 as mentioned. There are lots of misconceptions about calories, they are a measure of fuel for INDUSTRY, not for humans -though they are a pretty good estimate for fuelling humans. I have calculated calories myself in a lab. You heat/burn a substance and the heat given off is calculated -we heated a known volume of water and measured its increase in temperature, from that you can work out the calories.

I think some people think they feed people foods and stick them on treadmills or something and then work out calories that way.

There was a study in a recent thread about cooking food, that undercooked food gave less available calories to people, i.e. it just passed through partially undisgested, like half cooked pasta. There are many more variables too.

Khannie

Frogdog wrote: »

It's a complete myth. There is no such thing as a negative-calorie food.

Celery is the most common myth of all.

I read a semi-scientific experiment before where a guy tried to stuff his face with celery. During the time it took him to eat the celery he had burned more calories than he consumed. I'll see if I can dig it out.

Cold water is a "negative calorie" food for sure. I'm sure the same is true for cold diet coke. It costs a lot of energy to heat up cold liquids. Some of that energy will be quiescent / environmental, but the body will have to cover some of it too.

rubadub

Khannie wrote: »

Cold water is a "negative calorie" food for sure. I'm sure the same is true for cold diet coke.

Yes for the water, with the coke you never know, when people talk of calories it is usually a measure of how fat stuff will make you, and I think some studies might show the sweeteners could cause an insulin spike and could possibly lead to more fat gain/retention than drinking just water. But the coldness could offset this! it is all very complicated, like I said overcooked foods are easier to digest and so you absorb more fuel/calories from them. BUT on the otherhand I have read that soups are good for you since it sort of tricks the body into thinking you are full, and you slowly digest them. 6 of 1 half dozen of the other

I saw in the paper a study about rats being fed the same amount of "good fat" and transfats and the transfat rats had a higher body fat % after several years on the diet.

I remember reading about anorexics taking ice cold baths in a bid to burn calories. Shivering is really the involuntary movement of muscles to create body heat, which burns calories. But of course health comes first and you would be crazy to be taking cold baths with that in mind, you could just do something like walk to the shops and carry home your shopping to burn some extra calories.

Thoie

rubadub wrote: »

I remember reading about anorexics taking ice cold baths in a bid to burn calories. Shivering is really the involuntary movement of muscles to create body heat, which burns calories. But of course health comes first and you would be crazy to be taking cold baths with that in mind, you could just do something like walk to the shops and carry home your shopping to burn some extra calories.

I hadn't heard about ice cold baths, but a doctor once told me (years and years ago) that swimming in the sea takes more energy than swimming in a pool for two reasons. One is literally that it's just harder to swim across waves etc, but the other is that the sea is usually colder than a pool, and your body expends energy keeping your core body temperature where it should be. He wasn't talking about swimming in the North Sea or Antarctica, just to be clear!

mloc

Thoie wrote: »

I hadn't heard about ice cold baths, but a doctor once told me (years and years ago) that swimming in the sea takes more energy than swimming in a pool for two reasons. One is literally that it's just harder to swim across waves etc, but the other is that the sea is usually colder than a pool, and your body expends energy keeping your core body temperature where it should be. He wasn't talking about swimming in the North Sea or Antarctica, just to be clear!

You'd have to factor in the bouyancy provided by salt-water however, which would leave more of your body out of the water and require less effort to keep afloat, thus leading to less calories burned.

Thoie

I'm naturally extremely buoyant, salt water or no. I suspect my doctor was hoping that by swimming in the sea I'd become a little less so

Mellor

mloc wrote: »

You'd have to factor in the bouyancy provided by salt-water however, which would leave more of your body out of the water and require less effort to keep afloat, thus leading to less calories burned.

This might be true for a pool of water verses a pool pf salt water, but there is no way the reduced effort extra buoyancy in the sea comes closes to the increased effort due to waves, tide, current etc, I sat it doesn't even cover the temp aspect

rubadub

Mellor wrote: »

increased effort due to waves, tide, current etc,

Very true. There is a place I go swimming where you go down steps or a ladder straight into the sea. I considered myself a reasonably strong swimmer and was always particularly good at treading water, used to be the "deep end" goalie in water polo in school. But I am exhausted after just a few minutes in the sea treading water with decent waves. Meanwhile 70 year old lads are out there like feckin seals!