Foods with negative calories: reality or fantasy?

I’ve been reading a lot about so-called negative calorie foods and find the concept compelling. The idea is that these fruits and vegetables take up more calories for our body to digest than they contain. This would be cool, cool, huh? Especially since a lot of them are foods that I eat regularly anyway. Here is a list of the fruits and vegetables that are supposed to have this effect:

vegetables

Asparagus, beet root, broccoli, cabbage, carrot, cauliflower, celery, radicchio, chili pepper, cucumber, watercress, garlic, green beans, lettuce, onion, radish, spinach, turnip, zucchini

fruit

Apple, Blueberries, Cantaloupe, Cranberry, Grapefruit, Molasses, Lemon/Lime, Mango, Orange, Papaya, Peach, Pineapple, Raspberries, Strawberries, Tomato, Tangerine, Watermelon

The negative calorie theory was the basis for the 1990 book Foods that Cause You to Lose Weight: the Negative Calorie Effect, co-authored with Neal D. Barnard, MD, who is the founder and chairman of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. (PCRM). Unfortunately, while this concept is popular in diet guides, there is no scientific evidence that any food actually has this effect. For starters, there have been no scientific studies to prove the concept of a negative calorie diet. We can only rely on expert opinions. And most of the experts I’ve researched are skeptical. Even Dr. Amy Lanou, who works with Dr. Barnard, thinks the theory “is a bit elusive. I don’t think there’s a lot of information out there about the energy cost to digest specific foods. I don’t think there’s any research to say that it is.” eat so many raspberries, you will burn so many calories.” Barbara Rolls, Ph.D., a professor of nutritional sciences at Pennsylvania State University, calls the negative-calorie food theory “interesting, but very hypothetical. I don’t think we have the metabolic tools to determine if this it’s possible”. When asked about the theory, Ann Coulston, former president of the American Dietetic Association, said: “It’s folklore. People have made these calculations with the information available. There are no studies to support the theory.”

So where does that leave us? Rolls and other researchers recently found that women who ate a large, low-calorie salad containing these putative negative-calorie foods at the beginning of a meal consumed 12 percent fewer calories in the entire meal than if they ate no salad. Rolls concludes: “You eat fewer calories through satiety, not the metabolic effect.”

For me, the most important thing is to incorporate these foods into my diet as much as possible, not because they are negative calories, but because they are good, healthy choices and can only help me in my quest to live a healthier life. .