Foods that have no calories

Boy, what a great way to lose weight. Anyway,
Some Lucky dill pickles have 0 calories.[says so right on the jar]
Coffee 0
salt & pepper 0
Soda 0 [they say one, but it really has none]
Celery: some [but the work of eating makes it none]
Mushrooms [Id say same as celery but can't verify it].

There, make yourself a tasty meal and lose weight at the same time. All you can eat.

Are their any other foods?

Lettice. Iceberg Lettice, in particular, is little more than a leaf, nutrition-wise. No wonder herbivores have to spend their entire day eating.

Dill pickles do so have calories. A small (37g) dill pickle has 6.6 calories from 1.5 g carbohydrates. Granted, it's not a lot, but it's still calories. Also, dill pickles are really high in salt, which causes you to retain water if you eat too much, which can make you all bloated and heavy, so they're not such a great diet tool after all.

The only "foods" that can be considered to have no calories for the purposes of dieting are "foods" that the human body can't digest - something that consisted of pure fibre would fit into that. There's some sort of Japanese root vegetable, I think, that's like that, but I can't remember what it's called. I've had it, and I don't recall it tasting that good either.

Really Eris, Lucky stores pickles have NO calories. Yes, some do. But I did find some that say right on their nutrition label that they have no calories.

If you have a Lucky store in your area, you should be able to find them.

If we knew the japanese root you speak of them we can add it to our list. Then ask Martha Stewart to make something with it all.

<<How can they have no calories? Are they synthetic pickles, or just so small that the nutrition label guidelines can be twisted so that they can be said to have no calories?>>

Calories is a measure of energy spent. Apparently the pickles you are eating don't require any energy to break them down. Seems implausible to me, but who knows? I know in the Weight Watcher program, pickles are freebies. You can eat 'em until the cows come home. Same with most vegetables. Onion, anyone?

Urk. If Weight Watcher's isn't working for you, it's cause you're eating too many pickles...

According to the USDA Nutrient Database, a large pickle (4" long) contains 24.3 calories. Eat 5 of those, and you've had the equivalent of a granola bar. Yeah, so you're stuffed, but if part of your food problem is that you don't know when to stop, that might not be a deterring factor. As far as I know, cucumbers (from whence pickles come) are not that high in fibre, so any calories you pick up from pickles (hee hee) are going to be reasonably easily utilized by your body - that is, it's not going to take a lot of calories of expended energy to process the pickles. Moreover, you'd be taking in an awful lot of salt, which also means you'll be drinking a lot, and if that liquid isn't just water - if you're drinking juice or whatever, then you're taking in even more calories.

And pickles aren't terribly nutritious, either.

Not that I'm anti-pickle, I just don't think people should be eating them and thinking that they're going to have NO effect on their bodies.

Lettice. Iceberg Lettice, in particular, is little more than a leaf, nutrition-wise. No
wonder herbivores have to spend their entire day eating.

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Actually, from what I understand, herbivores can turn the cellulose in lettuce, celery, maple leaves, and Kentucky blue grass innto usable sugars because their stomaches contain the enzymes to do it. If we had the same enzymes, eating a stalk of celery would be about the same as eating a Twinkie.

Do those tasteless rice cake things have any calories? Barely chewed corn probably doesn't have calories, either...it goes right through you!!

How about ice? It has negative calories - the energy it takes to melt it (heat of fusion) and to heat it to body temperature. How much ice would I need to eat to cancel a cookie? If I were awake, I could calculate it, but I think I won't because it would probably be enough ice to make me seize from water intoxication and hyponatremia.

How can they have no calories? Are they synthetic pickles, or just so small that the nutrition label guidelines can be twisted so that they can be said to have no calories? I'm guessing it's the latter, and the guidelines state that calorie counts must be accurate to within 5 calories - if they're really small pickles then they might be less than 5 calories, which could then legally (not mathematically) be rounded to zero. But I'd bet money that there are calories lurking in those pickles somewhere.

There are no Lucky stores in my area, since I live in Canada. So I can't check this out for myself. However, I do very much like dill pickles, so if anyone wants to send me a jar of calorie-free Lucky store dill pickles, I'll pay for the pickles, postage and handling, although I don't know what customs would have to say about importing pickles. Just e-mail me if you want to contribute to my pickle education.

I'll do some more research into the Japanese calorie-free food now that I think about it, I'm not so sure that it is a root...I'll try to get an answer on this later today, and I'll be sure to forward my findings to Martha Stewart :-)

Oh, and I checked on mushrooms, too, and a cup of raw mushrooms contains 24 calories (if you want to check any of this out, the info's available at http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl.

Being the nosy person that I am, let me add this, and be on my way:

When you drastically reduce your calories can help in reducing your weight, you will find that once you go back to your normal eating habits, you will gain back the weight, and perhaps gain even more.

The only way to successfully lose weight, and keep it off, is to excersise, and to eat in moderation. Yes, you can have your cake, and eat it too..... but don't expect to gorf the entire thing in one sitting.

Melis

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Wench #407, IWG
Wenchmommy extraordionaire
Goddess of Typos, Dark Chocolate and Fyne Ale

Urk. If Weight Watcher's isn't working for you, it's cause you're eating too many pickles...According to the USDA Nutrient Database, a large pickle (4" long) contains 24.3 calories. Eat 5 of those, and you've had the equivalent of a granola bar.

#1 - I've yet to meet an overweight person whose weight was put on by eating too many bananas or tomatoes OR cucumbers. Even LARGE ones, though I take issue with your assessment that 4" is "large." #2 - Regardless, it's better both in terms of nutrition and calories, to eat 5 pickles than 5 granola bars, isn't it? At WW, fruits and vegetables are freebies (or close to it) because they are low in fat and calories AND because they promote good health.

Good health should always be the bottom line in an eating plan.

Them Lucky pickles are full size, 5 inches long or so...Havent tried any for some time...

I dont know about the salt. I surf for hours and the salt water doesnt have much effect, and yes, one does swallow a bit of it.

As for exercise, well it does make bigger muscles which weigh more than fat, right?

Handy asked:

As for exercise, well it does make bigger muscles which weigh more than fat, right?

Depends.

If you go to Gold's Gym, work out every day of the week for four hours a day, yeah, you will get bigger muscles, and weigh more.

However. If you do moderate excersise (which means elevating your heart rate to conversational level-- working out, yet still being able to talk without being winded) for thirty minutes, three or four times a week, then no, you won't get "big muscles". What you will do is burn off the storage fat (think beer belly, love handles, et cetra), raise your metabolism, and tone down. You will get more energy, sleep better, and feel much better about yourself-- and part of that is because you can work off an amazing amount of stress while you excersise.

Besides... weight is honestly relative. what you want to look at is what's called a fat index. A person can be in their "target weight range" and be a slab of flab... and another person could be considered "overweight" and just have solid muscle, with just enough fat to keep them healthy. Remember the "pinch an inch" test? Your doctor can do tests to determine your fat index.

And as always, the disclaimer: If you decide to change your lifestyle in terms of diet or excersise, please consult your physician so that you can determine what is best for you.

Melis

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Wench #407, IWG
Wenchmommy extraordionaire
Goddess of Typos, Dark Chocolate and Fyne Ale

How about ice? It has negative calories - the energy it takes to melt it (heat of fusion) and to heat it to body temperature. How much ice would I need to eat to cancel a cookie? If I were awake, I could calculate it, but I think I won't because it would probably be enough ice to make me seize from water intoxication and hyponatremia.

It takes 76 calories (gram-calories) to melt a gram of ice, and another 38 calories to raise its temperature to your body temperature. So, your body expends 114 gram-calories when you eat a gram of ice. Unfortunately, the food "calorie" that we're all familiar with is actually a kilgram-calorie (kcal), which is equal to 1000 gram-calories. An oreo has about 47 kcals (47000 cals). You would have to eat 412 grams of ice (about a pint) to cancel one oreo. You would have to eat 10 lbs of ice to cancel a Big Mac.



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- Mark

#1 - I've yet to meet an overweight person whose weight was put on by eating too many bananas or tomatoes OR cucumbers. Even LARGE ones, though I take issue with your assessment that 4" is "large." #2 - Regardless, it's better both in terms of nutrition and calories, to eat 5 pickles than 5 granola bars, isn't it? At WW, fruits and vegetables are freebies (or close to it) because they are low in fat and calories AND because they promote good health.

First off, it's not MY assessment, it's the USDA's assessment. If they've got low standards for pickles, it's not my fault, I just find their database pretty handy to use. I thought 4" was a bit small, but then I just thought that maybe here in Canada we get bigger pickles as a matter of course. I guess not. And a large banana contains 125 calories, again, about the same as a granola bar, so you could conceivably get fat eating bananas. Three bananas a day that you don't need will add on about 3 lbs a month.


Secondly, because pickles are *processed* I don't think they count as healthy vegetables, but if it wasn't for the salt, they'd be better for you than granola bars. Different food group entirely of course, but that's beside the point. Just for illustration, though, let's contrast a pickle (which I still maintain is a condiment, along the same lines as ketchup) with a genuine vegetable, a carrot. At 100 grams of each, we get:

Pickle: 1.2 g fibre Carrot: 3 g fibre
0.6 g protein 1 g protein
1282 g sodium 35 g sodium
1.9 mg Vit C 9 mg Vit C
329 IU Vit A 28000 IU VitA

So carrots are about twice as good for you as pickles, even before you take excess sodium into consideration. I checked on granola bars, too, and they don't seem to have much going for them except bulk calories. Go figure.

I don't actually know what excess sodium does to you, but I do know that sodium has to be balanced with potassium or else your nerves don't work properly, so chances are if you've got too much sodium swimming around in you, you're not going to be feeling all that great. Perhaps a physician could enlighten us on this?

Eris, I went to Luckys yesterday and sure enough the pickles are still there with a calorie count of 0 and a sodium count of 390mg per serving.

There are 4 forms [Including a silly North American Free Trade Agreement Form] to do to ship anything to our friends in Canana. So, its not likely that I would be mailing you any pickles [Not to mention the postage which is around $20]....

At any rate, they taste like regular pickles. If I ever get the jar label off, maybe I can scan and post it if I can figure out how to attach a picture to a message :-)

Well, thanks for checking on that, handy! I figured there would be some sort of ridiculous bureaucratic mess to go through to get pickles from somewhere other than this country. Scanning in the label would be cool, though - I'd be interested to see what the serving size is, and how the info on the label compares against what's in the USDA database.

Enjoy your pickles!

[Markxxx]

So did anyone ever find this out for sure?

[handy]

Mark, just look at ANY pickle label, youll see they have 0 or 5 calories each. As a matter of fact, I did that recently & it seems pretty consistent.

[ruadh]

I'll back handy up on this. I eat a LOT of pickles

Maybe the sodium in them isn't good for weight loss but surely it's better than snacking on chocolate chip cookies.

[Doctordec]

So if I eat my Big Macs frozen and wash them down with frozen beer I'll gain muscle mass ?
Damn I love science !

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"Hope is not a method"

[Markxxx]

Are there low salt pickles?

[handy]

I would think the salt in them makes people pee like crazy, thus lose more weight?

[fuzzy-wuzzy]

why not just make life simple and go on the carbohydrate diet and stop counting calories...eat all the pickles you want...of any kind...and sodium is not bad for you according to my doctor as long as you drink at least 8 glasses of water a day...I'm sure that's not true for all people...but it works for me....

[jane_says]

My mom was a Weight Watchers counselor for years. I don't know what the truth is, but I can tell you what their story is.

They say you can eat all the non-starchy vegetables you like (tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, celery, etc.) and not gain weight because the number of calories your body expends chewing, digesting and ridding itself of these foods is higher than the number of calories contained in the foods themselves. Thus, they are said to have a "negative" calorie count.

Not good science or math, but it seems to work for a lot of people.

[handy]

Yeah, but are they ever bland! Plus, hopefully you don't have a low flush toilet.