Negative Calorie Foods

Negative Calorie Foods

Possibly there are no foods on earth that contain no calories. There are no foods that can be named as negative calorie foods in the sense that they contain calories with negative valence. Actually, the negative calorie foods consume more calories during their digestion process than the amount of calories these foods possess.

The body puts more effort in breaking up and processing these foods compared to other foods in terms of calorie consumption. The body needs to work harder for extracting calories from these foods. Negative Calorie Concept

It needs roughly 150 calories to digest the dessert. The example of negative calorie foods may include the name of broccoli. Negative Calorie and Weight Loss

In practice, there are a great variety of negative calorie foods available in the market. The specialties of these foods are to offer low calories, and brilliant negative calorie qualities in addition to yummy flavor. Adding fish in your diet along with negative calorie foods may help you to stay healthy even in long term. If we stay aligned with theory, it implies that these types of foods burn calories.

The Theory of Negative Calorie Foods

All foods have some calorie content. Even the foods that have "negative calories" must also have some calories. Then why these foods are termed as "negative calorie foods"?

(i) If we eat a food whose calorie content is more than the calorie needed to digest that food, our body gains in weight. Such foods are not the negative calorie foods.

(ii) If we eat a food which needs same number of calories as the calorie content of the food, then our body does not gain in weigh, as these foods do not add any calories to the body.

(iii) If we eat a food for which the calorie needed to digest that food is more than the calorie content of the food itself, then the calorie balance becomes negative.

The digestion of such negative calorie foods exhausts our body calories. These foods, though possess some calories, yet they are known as "negative calorie foods" because of this negative calorie balance in the process. According to the theory of negative calorie food, our body will burn more calories digesting it than the number of calories it can add to our body.

The Examples of Negative Calorie Foods
The negative calorie foods are mostly vegetables and fruits, which are low in fat and high in carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber. Some of these foods are celery, broccoli, asparagus, spinach, melons, berries, etc.

Negative Calorie Foods in Weight Loss

Following arguments are in favor of negative calorie foods and weight loss.
  1. As the negative calorie foods possess only a small amount of fat or no fat at all, they will not increase the body weight.
  2. The dietary fibers present in these foods will make you feel full for a longer time. So if you include these so called negative calorie foods in any diet, then you will not feel hungry.
  3. The carbohydrates in the foods need considerable number of calories in the process of digestion process. So these foods will add only a few calories to your body weight and will not increase the weight.
  4. Further, a cold low calorie food may become a negative calorie food, because the food needs to be warmed to body temperature, which involves energy expenditure.
  5. It is believed that certain negative calorie vegetables and fruits speed up metabolism, which is good for burning of calories and thus in weight loss.
  6. The negative calorie foods, because of their high water content, will decrease your appetite and make you feel full.

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