A Short Guide to Understanding Negative Calories

Author：佚名 Source：none Hits：152 UpdateTime：2008-10-19 0:54:18


The concept of negative calories is a fairly new one and people have mixed feelings about whether it is possible or not. The basic theory given by people who believes it works is that negative calorie food takes more energy to digest the food than the food gives nutritionally. If you had a dessert that contained 300 calories and it took 150 calories to digest it, this would leave 150 calories that would be turned into fat on your body. For an example of the way the suggested negative calorie method works, you may have eaten a food that only contains 100 calories, and it takes 150 calories to digest this food, then you have burned an additional 50 calories. All food has some amount of calories; there are no "negative calorie" foods as such. The main theory is the way that the calorie count of the food is less than that of the energy needed to aid digestion.

The idea that negative calories exist is based on the fact that the body has to work harder to breakdown, process and digest the food. Factors such as the vitamin and enzyme content of the food has also to be taken into consideration when classing a food as having negative calories. This rules out the chance of junk food (empty calories) being counted as having negative calories as they do not contain enough vitamins and enzymes.

The amount of food that is considered to have negative calories is a small list but contains vegetables such as peppers, celery, cress, marrow and turnip. In regards to fruit the list contains plums, watermelon, damsons, peaches and strawberries as foods with attributes of the negative calorie.

There is still a lot of controversy over whether the negative calorie theory is in fact possible. Many experts feel that there are no foods that could be considered as having negative calories. They have taken into account the amount of energy needed to burn food may vary due to different combinations of food that we may consume. There has been some research involving celery which seems to suggest that there is a possibility that the negative calorie theory may have some truth to it. Celery always has a certain amount of energy that is needed for the digestion system to break it down, however it contains few calories.

All seem to agree that there needs to be more research undertaken into whether negative calories do exist. If it is ever proved to be fact, then this could pave the way for a new approach to dieting and weight loss programs. There are already some providers of negative calorie cookbooks who have them on the open market. It is worth remembering that the body still needs a set amount of calories each day and that if you are trying out the negative calorie theory your diet should still remain healthy and balanced. Please remember to also consult your medical doctor before starting any weight loss or diet related programs.