Are there negative calorie foods?

[alterego]

I was under the impression that celery, among other foods, are called 'catabolic' for their negative calorie effects. Is this just a marketing scheme? Doing a google search (http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=deskbar&q=catabolic) for catabolic brings up catabolic.com which claims that it is "The Diet that works three times faster than starvation!" :dubious:

www.m-w.com has catabolic meaning, "destructive metabolism involving the release of energy and resulting in the breakdown of complex materials within the organism."

Is that fancyspeak for 'negative calorie'? I was surprised not to see the word mentioned in the column.

[alterego]

Obligatory link (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040507.html).

[Ranchoth]

What *I* want to know is...is it terribly wrong of me to laugh myself silly at the skeleton-man in Slug's illustration?

He just reminds me of the evil clown bed (http://members.lycos.co.uk/jamesweb/images/maggie's_first_word/evil_clown_bed.jpg) from the Simpsons.


Ranchoth
("If you should die before you wake...AHEHEHEHEHAHAHEHE!)

[dotchan]

AFAIK, a "negative calorie food" is just a food that results in a net "negative" caloric intake when compared to the average amount that you burn, or something like that. There's no magic involved. It's just that as a living being, you need to expend energy in maintaining said life, and if you want to lose weight you restrict your input.

[EvilGhandi]

I'd never thought I'd say this but Cecil is wrong.

While his data and his experiment were accurate his conclusion was flawed. The heart of it depended on not liking celery much. It took him an entire hour to consume the celery. He then did a little simple math to show that his intake of celery over one hour was insuficient to support his dietary need.

I could come up with the same results using some rich food that would take me a while to eat, say yak nards.

Lets assume that yak nards are eight calories per gram like pure fat. I imagine it would take me no less that 15 days to convince myself to consume 100 of them weighing 12 grams each.

Therefore yak nards will not support human life. Well that is probably true, erm... ok yak nards do not have the caloric content needed to support my life. Cause I wouldn't eat enough of them.

Now me, I loves me some celery I could eat that paltry little stack Unca Ceece described in a few minutes. So 72 calories in 5 minutes is 504 calorie an hour. easily enough to support my life.

[chorpler]

So I guess then the question becomes, since celery has so few calories per unit of mass (or whatever it was), could you consume enough celery to support your daily caloric requirements before your were too full to continue eating?

[EvilGhandi]

Or how many calories would it take to dump a load of celery fiber?

No!

No one in their right mind would suggest an all celery diet. The point is celery is not a "negative calorie food. No matter how much you want to believe it.

[chorpler]

Well, you haven't really made that point. When you eat more celery in a given amount of time, doesn't it take more energy to digest it? Cecil's time-dependent calculations don't seem relevant to this part, but it's really the fundamental question: does it take more energy to digest the celery than you get out of it?

[EvilGhandi]

We show them but they do not see.

Ok lets get down to it, using Cecils own data.

Eight stalks of celery 72 calories, not exactly eating a stick of butter but 72 calories none the less. I estimate I could chow through them in about 5 minutes if I was hungry 10 if I were absentl mindedly snacking. Granted I would chop them into little sticks.

72 calories aught to cover the few minutes in the ten I spent gnaing on the celery and then some. Not fattening but not zero energy gain either.

Lets take it one step farther, say I have an automated celery crusher/ juicer device and all I had to do was drink the juice it evtracted. There goes the thrust of your argument right there.

Or did you mean to imply that beef is a zero calorie food because if I had to slaughter, dress, clean, slice and cook it before I could eat it means it yields less calories than it took to eat?

Sorry bub, but all foods would qualify then, that damn entropy and all.

[Shrinking Violet]

I think the point of it is that celery is so fibrous , that your digestive system expends more energy in processing it than you gain by consuming the few calories the celery contains.

[alterego]

Does anyone have any input in regards to the topic I started this thread around?

[chorpler]

72 calories aught to cover the few minutes in the ten I spent gnaing on the celery and then some. Not fattening but not zero energy gain either.

You're focusing on the time-spent-eating argument, in your rebuttal to what Cecil said, but ignoring the main point. If it takes more energy to digest the celery than the digestive process gets from it, it's a negative-calorie food. Regardless of the time you spend eating it.

[EvilGhandi]

chorpler,

If it takes more energy to digest the celery than the digestive process gets from it

If this were true than I would agree with you but this just doesn't seem to be the case.

We dont have to eat all the celery to make this observation. Since we both agree that a solid diet of celery would be less than adequate for any lifestyle, just not enough caloric content. This does not make it a negative food. just a (very) low cal one.

Lets try it from a different angle. One of Cecils celery sticks has about eight calories (if I did the math right) right about the same a a cherry lifesaver. Not many, to be sure but present none the less. Eating it will expend some energy, and the digestive process will take some as well, right up to the grand finally of ploping it into the bowl.

The question is does this whole process take more than the magic eight? I doubt it. If this were the case celery would subtract calories from dishes it were added to. Nice thought, but untrue.

Shrinking Violet,

celery is so fibrous

This does not make it anti-caloric (is that even a word?) just a pain in the ass to eat. Celery juice or celery soup would significantly reduce the amount of work it takes to consume, boosting the already tiny amount of usable calories to a little less tiny.

Before you cry foul, and say "we were working with raw 10" sticks of celery", consider taro. This root needs to be dug up, peeled, cooked for 12 hours, then pounded into a paste with water before it is fit to consume. Yet it managed to be the primary staple in the polynesian diet for centuries.

[chorpler]

The question is does this whole process take more than the magic eight? I doubt it. If this were the case celery would subtract calories from dishes it were added to. Nice thought, but untrue.

Why is it untrue? If it does take more calories to digest (more than the magic eight per stick, that is) then it does effectively subtract calories from dishes it is added to.

You may doubt that the process of digesting a celery stick takes more than eight calories, but we have Snopes and Cecil, both usually fairly reliable sources, who say that it does. On the other hand, they also have both asserted that drinking ice water will cause you to burn more calories, which has been hotly contested by a number of people as being untrue unless you drink enough water to make yourself start shivering, so just because they assert this doesn't make it true -- that's one of the things Cecil cites as problematic with Snopes's answer, in fact.

What we need is an actual number to pin on this, so we could see if it actually does take more than eight calories to digest a celery stick. I think this is what Cecil attempted to do in his column, but as you pointed out, he got caught up in the amount of time it takes to eat the celery rather than the amount of energy it takes to digest it.

[barbitu8]

www.m-w.com has catabolic meaning, "destructive metabolism involving the release of energy and resulting in the breakdown of complex materials within the organism."

Is that fancyspeak for 'negative calorie'? I was surprised not to see the word mentioned in the column.No. Metabolism
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=metabolism: The chemical processes occurring within a living cell or organism that are necessary for the maintenance of life. includes both catabolism, which you already defined, and anabolism The phase of metabolism in which simple substances are synthesized into the complex materials of living tissue. Anabolism builds materials and catabolism breaks them down for energy.

For a more thorough definition, refer to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002257.htm

[EvilGhandi]

chorpler,

I agree. I've been thinking pretty hard for a way to determine how much energy it takes to digest celery. Best I could come up with was a little experiment I am not sure I even have the interest to preform.

My dad is a diabetic and has one of those little blood sugar meters. If I go over to his house on an empty stomach, take a glucose level then eat all his celery and re-test a half hour later, will that prove anything?

I expect I would see a slight spike in blood sugar right after consumption proving that there is nutritive value in celery. But how do we determine if this sugar isn't all used up in passing the bulk through. I suspect not, but I have no idea how to prove it. Any ideas?

[Namo]

We show them but they do not see.

Ok lets get down to it, using Cecils own data.

Eight stalks of celery 72 calories, not exactly eating a stick of butter but 72 calories none the less. I estimate I could chow through them in about 5 minutes if I was hungry 10 if I were absentl mindedly snacking. Granted I would chop them into little sticks.

72 calories aught to cover the few minutes in the ten I spent gnaing on the celery and then some. Not fattening but not zero energy gain either.




You all are forgetting that the body actualy spends energy on digesting the food.
Some foods are harder for the body to digest and are there for actualy calorie "negative".

Fiber is hard to digest, so it does make sence that a bad tasting, slimy green fiber "bar" made by nature is one of the few calorie negative foods around.

[EvilGhandi]

Hey namo,

I forgot no such thing. If you would have bothered to actually read the thread you would have known that. Try this, just for the sake of scientific method.

1 Read the post directly above yours
2 Read yours
3Profit!

[RiverRunner]

Lets take it one step farther, say I have an automated celery crusher/ juicer device and all I had to do was drink the juice it evtracted. There goes the thrust of your argument right there.

Let's leave it at raw celery. The mechanical action of the chewing involved would account for a little bit of energy spent. I still can't come up with a good way to measure said expenditure, though. I don't think the blood sugar test will do the trick.

What we need is someone who is all digestive system to down some celery for us in the name of science. Is Homer Simpson available?


RR

[EvilGhandi]

Ok raw celery it is.

Since the celery juice would be raw (uncooked) it should count but since I know what you meant, we need to define how much processing is acceptable before we start "cheating" to prove celery isn't really a negative calorie food.

You state,
"The mechanical action of the chewing involved would account for a little bit of energy spent"

I disagree, I think it accounts for the lions share of the work done in processing the vegetable. A few people have stated that we will be expending energy digesting the fiber. By definition, fiber is indigestible so we will be expending zero calories on that task.

What remains is the amount of energy it takes the body to absorb the glucose present in the celery juice and how much it takes to pass the bulk.

Our bodies are very efficent at absorbing glucose into the blood stream. This cannot amount to a much of a caloric expenditure.

I don't know if you have ever taken psillium (Metamucil) but lemme tell ya, celery is bush league compared to this stuff. I'm guessing that in a balanced diet, passing the fibrous bulk of a sane amount of celery is negligible. I eat the stuff by the bunch and have never noticed any thing particulary bulky about the resulting, err... lets call it bowl trout.

So I cant just plop the stuff into my food processor and whiz it into pulp. Can we chop it into say, rice sized particles? How bout 2" long julienne sticks? Or do we have to gnaw it straight off the bunch like Bugs Bunny chawing down a carrot?

It seems we need to go to great lengths to control the method of consumption to arrive at the conclusion that celery is negative net gain when used as a foodstuff. This alone is enough to set my BS detector off.

[Askance]

A few people have stated that we will be expending energy digesting the fiber. By definition, fiber is indigestible so we will be expending zero calories on that task.

What they mean is, it'll be expended not digesting the fibre, ie pushing it down the entire length of the gastro-intestinal canal. This would certainly consume more energy than chewing it.

[EvilGhandi]

"This would certainly consume more energy than chewing it"

This site

http://whyfiles.org/103fat2/6.html

Lists chewing Gum at 11 calories per hour.

From Cecils article we learn that we burn 60 ber hour sleeping. This accounts for our heart beating, breathing, brain activity, body temperature regulation and a host of other functions including our digestive processes.

Are you sure the word you want to use is "certainly"?

[EvilGhandi]

And here,

http://vegweb.com/articles/monique-1017098288.shtml

We learn that one cup of celery contains

celery contains adequate amounts of potassium, folate and fiber. One cup of diced celery provides 344.4 milligrams of potassium, 34 micrograms of folate, 2 grams of fiber, 19 calories, and less than 0.16 grams of fat

See there? 2 whoppinggrams of fiber. Without a doubt a huge strain on the digestive system. Or not.

Or you can check out what the USDA has to say about "Celery, Raw 1 cup.

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin/list_nut_edit.pl

[Askance]

Are you sure the word you want to use is "certainly"?

Yep. Chewing one cup of diced celery, to use your example, would take maybe one minute, so from your figures that's 11/60 or about 0.183 calories. Pushing that 2 grams of fibre through howevermany metres of intestine would certainly use more than that.

[olihale]

well one point, technically you would expend energy 'digesting' the fibre, as the smooth muscle in the epithelium of the small and large intestine has to contract to push it all out, which expends energy. Celery is pretty much all lignin and water, so its kind of like eating a diluted piece of wood. celery is rubbish.

[RiverRunner]

celery is rubbish.

I love it. Well, "love" may be too strong a word, but I do like it. Besides, it is a key constituent of mirepoix (http://web.foodnetwork.com/food/web/encyclopedia/termdetail/0,7770,4048,00.html) , which in turn is a key ingredient of all sort of good stuff.


RR

[Plynck]

...On the other hand, they also have both asserted that drinking ice water will cause you to burn more calories, which has been hotly contested by a number of people as being untrue unless you drink enough water to make yourself start shivering...

If we accept the definition of a calorie as "The amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius", then how could drinking ice water not burn calories? A healthy body will attempt to bring the water up to 98.6F, rather than letting the ice water cool the temperature down. The body will burn calories to raise the water temperature.

Best to all,

Plynck

[John W. Kennedy]

It is an unfortunate fact that in the food world, a "calorie" means a kilocalorie. (I gather that it's not the food people's fault, though, that they inherited a "small calorie" and a "large calorie" -- aka "calorie" and "Calorie" -- from scientists.) So you'd have to drink a liter of ice water to lose 100 food calories by that means.

[John W. Kennedy]

It is an unfortunate fact that in the food world, a "calorie" means a kilocalorie. (I gather that it's not the food people's fault, though, that they inherited a "small calorie" and a "large calorie" -- aka "calorie" and "Calorie" -- from scientists.) So you'd have to drink a liter of ice water to lose 100 food calories by that means.

Whoops! Make that about 30 food calories.

[chorpler]

If we accept the definition of a calorie as "The amount of heat required to raise the temperature of one gram of water by one degree Celsius", then how could drinking ice water not burn calories? A healthy body will attempt to bring the water up to 98.6F, rather than letting the ice water cool the temperature down. The body will burn calories to raise the water temperature.

I don't want to get into the details of the argument here, as it would be a big hijack. Check out this thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=57799) on the topic.

But, to summarize, if I recall properly, the basic argument against it is that drinking water doesn't help you burn calories unless it makes you cold enough that you start to actively shiver, because otherwise the heat that raises the water's temperature will just be waste heat, which would have been produced anyway -- in other words, with a small amount of ice water, you won't burn more calories to warm the water, you will just shed less heat through your skin.

[EvilGhandi]

Just thought I'd drop back in and remind everyone that Cecil does not claim celery to be "negative calorie" in his column. Just that it does not have enough calories to support a very energetic lifestyle. He also points out that it is comparable to broccoli and cabbage in caloric content per gram.

I adressed the fact that Uca Ceese only proved you couldn't survive on eight celery sticks an hour as your sole source of nutrition. True enough, but it dosn't show celery to be non-nutritive.

It wasn't until the "true believers" started posting that I had to resume my quest to debunk the negative calorie aspect of celery consumption.

Ok lets review,

100 grams of celery contains about 17 calories

About the same as two lifesaver candies

Less than two grams of fiber (the 2 gram mes was based on one cup or 120 grams)

95 grams of water

Now for the arguments.

"celery is so fibrous"

Not really, it's less that 2 percent fiber

Paraphrase,
"pushing 2 grams of fibre will "certainly" use more than .183 calories"

Ok I am going to concede this, though I know you have no cite, I also cannot find any study anywhere that explores how many calories it takes to take a 2 gram dump.

Lets pull a number out of our ass and say 3.

That means our bodies use 3.183 calories to extract 17 calories from celery. A net gain of 13.817 delicious calories.

But what of the 95 grams of water? How many calories does it take to pee that out?

Figure it out yourself, I'm bored of this game.

[Plynck]

I don't want to get into the details of the argument here, as it would be a big hijack. Check out this thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=57799) on the topic.

Thanks, Chorpler.

I wasn't aware of the previous column. Thanks for the link. My monitor is now permanently scorched, but thanks :)


I wasn't intending to hijack the thread or open old wounds. My only thought was to respond to the concept of ingesting some substance that would reduce calories. It appears that there are two schools of thought here, right or wrong: Either reducing calories through increased digestion, or reducing calories based on homeothermic activity. Oh wait, there are three if you believe the infomercials...

I now leave this thread to the high celeried folks.

Best to all,

plynck

[swyves]

The quantity of energy that you shed through your skin depends on your skin temperature and the rate at which heat leaves it for a given temperatuere gradient. Drinking 1 litre of ice water will certainly not result in your body temperature dropping, so yes, you do heat it up. It's all part of the body's temperature regulatory mechanisms. Thermal energy is generated by a lot of other means than shivering. So, drinking a litre of ice water will cost you about 36 calories. If you eat any of the ice, it'll be a lot more. If you were to eat 1kg of ice slowly enough that it had no effect on your body temperature, you'd lose about 116 Calories.

[chorpler]

Did you read the above thread? Perhaps you shoudl take this argument there. I'd certainly be interested to see what comes of it.

[swyves]

Wow, thanks Chorpler, but I think I'll just take it easy on that one. I see three long pages of engineers trying to guess at how physiology works. If anyone wants some info, that is my job (physiologist, Cambridge University, UK) so just drop an email (reg42ATcam.ac.uk) and I can reply either in kind or by post to a message board.
However, with that long argument, I don't think I see much evidence of people who are interested in how the body works and what the answer is to the problem. They seem more keen on keeping on shouting their ideas until they become right.

[barbitu8]

The quantity of energy that you shed through your skin depends on your skin temperature and the rate at which heat leaves it for a given temperatuere gradient. Drinking 1 litre of ice water will certainly not result in your body temperature dropping, so yes, you do heat it up. It's all part of the body's temperature regulatory mechanisms. Thermal energy is generated by a lot of other means than shivering. So, drinking a litre of ice water will cost you about 36 calories. If you eat any of the ice, it'll be a lot more. If you were to eat 1kg of ice slowly enough that it had no effect on your body temperature, you'd lose about 116 Calories.
Since you're a physiologist, swyves, let me ask you a related question, over which I had an argument many years ago with a fellow runner. He maintained that you lose more calories running in hot weather since the body sweats more to maintain thermal equilibrium. My contention was, and still is, that you lose more in cold weather since the body has to produce more heat to maintain thermal equilibrium. Do you have an answer to this?

[barbitu8]

Let me add that we also had an argument about thin runners versus heavier runners running into the wind. (He was heavier than I.) His contention was that thin runners have an advantage because they have less wind resistance. My contention was that thin runners have a disadvantage because the wind affects them more. Do you have an opinion on this weighty question? (Nothing like a run to solve the world's problems.)

[swyves]

Sure: as for the weather thing, I'm afraid your friend was right. Just to live in cold weather take more energy than living in hot weather, as your body's mechanisms to generate heat (thus keeping your body teperature stable) burn calories fast. However, when you're running you're using calories so fast that excess heat is being generated. Therefore, the mechanisms to warm you up can slow down, even if it's quite cold.
On the other hand, sweating (and other mechanisms for shedding excess thermal energy) do consume some energy (albeit much less than the heat-generating mechanisms). If you're running, you tend to be sweating anyway (or at least I do!). That means, expending calories to cool down. So unless it's seriously seriously cold, the problem is one of keeping the temperature low despite all the energy being burned up (with less than 100% efficiency) in the muscles.
Therefore, the hotter it is, the bigger that problem is -- and hence, the amount of energy you expend. I wouldn't advocate running in hotter weather as a way of burning extra calories though -- the difference is minimal, and you're putting some serious stress on a lot of systems.

As for the wind question, the lighter runner has to expend proportionally more energy, the bigger one actually more. Really strong winds might change this, if the light runner is actually having trouble keeping on course (we're talking gales here). Then they might actually have to expend more energy.

While I'm happy to answer all sorts of questions, this is getting a bit away from the topic of the thread. I'm happy to correspond by email or msn messenger (my hotmail is swyves), or to move to a different message board (or maybe a new thread?).

[a98madison]

Just thought I'd drop back in and remind everyone that Cecil does not claim celery to be "negative calorie" in his column. Just that it does not have enough calories to support a very energetic lifestyle. He also points out that it is comparable to broccoli and cabbage in caloric content per gram.

I adressed the fact that Uca Ceese only proved you couldn't survive on eight celery sticks an hour as your sole source of nutrition. True enough, but it dosn't show celery to be non-nutritive.

It wasn't until the "true believers" started posting that I had to resume my quest to debunk the negative calorie aspect of celery consumption.

Ok lets review,

100 grams of celery contains about 17 calories

About the same as two lifesaver candies

Less than two grams of fiber (the 2 gram mes was based on one cup or 120 grams)

95 grams of water

Now for the arguments.

"celery is so fibrous"

Not really, it's less that 2 percent fiber

Paraphrase,
"pushing 2 grams of fibre will "certainly" use more than .183 calories"

Ok I am going to concede this, though I know you have no cite, I also cannot find any study anywhere that explores how many calories it takes to take a 2 gram dump.

Lets pull a number out of our ass and say 3.

That means our bodies use 3.183 calories to extract 17 calories from celery. A net gain of 13.817 delicious calories.

But what of the 95 grams of water? How many calories does it take to pee that out?

Figure it out yourself, I'm bored of this game.

And even if you go though all that it matters less as time goes on since CO2 increases are putting more carbs in the veggies anyway without adding fiber or protein.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20000325/bob9.asp

[aruvqan]

Eight stalks of celery 72 calories, not exactly eating a stick of butter but 72 calories none the less. I estimate I could chow through them in about 5 minutes if I was hungry 10 if I were absentl mindedly snacking. Granted I would chop them into little sticks.


Or did you mean to imply that beef is a zero calorie food because if I had to slaughter, dress, clean, slice and cook it before I could eat it means it yields less calories than it took to eat?

Sorry bub, but all foods would qualify then, that damn entropy and all.
damn, now i want some celery and none in the house=(

Well, actually, how about that damned rooster I hate...I would have to chase it around the yard for about 5 minutes before I could corner it, chop its little head off while hanging upside down in a canvas cone looped over a fencepost. Then I would have to go and lug out my propane burner, a large pot and water, and get it to a quick boil, then dunk the dearly departed into it and start plucking. After the damned think is plucked, I would have to clean it, and chop off the feet and wing tips, use needlenose pliers to get out the little stubby protofeathers, and take it in and kosher it. [toss it into heavily salted water. Trust me, kosher storeboght chicken as well, makes a world of difference.] Then I would have to prep carrots, celery, a couple onions, some potatos and herbs, and soak a rommertopf in water. I can do that while I am koshering the bird, and even go outside and dump the water left after firming up the skin to pluck it over the little mound of dirt I backfilled the hole I bled the bird out into and dumped the miscellaneous internal guts I didnt salvage and throw int the freezer. Helps level out the little mound=).

Back in the house, put all the veggies, seasonings, chicken and about half a cup or so of chicken broth out of the freezer into the rommertopf, pop it into an oven and kick on the heat, call it about 2 hours or so...not sure how you would figure the calories. If you wanted to really work off some calories, make it a wood burning oven, and you could add chopping wood, making a fire outside to boil the water before plucking, and making and tending a fire inside for cooking=)

There is a reason that women used to not be fat if they didnt have a servant...


Actually, if people are in the connecticut/massachusets area Sturbridge Village used to do a great all day saturday thing where you do a meal in one of the houses the way they did in 1830, great fun=)