Are Negative-Calorie Foods Real?
You’ve probably known someone who consumed insane amounts of celery because digesting it required more calories than the food contained. However, the idea of “negative calorie foods” is nothing more than a myth, according to a new study published in a pre-print publication, bioRxiv.
In case you’re not familiar with the idea, some dieters believe that eating certain fibrous foods, like celery, lettuce, grapefruit, cucumber, and broccoli, burned more calories than the actual food themselves.
Although, medical experts advise against using this as a weight loss strategy, researchers at the University of Alabama debunked the myth with a scientific study in lizards. They found that the reptiles retained one-fourth of the calories from celery, meaning they did not in fact burn off more calories than the food contained. It’s worth nothing that the findings weren’t published in a peer-reviewed journal, meaning outside researchers didn’t critique the strength of the study.
Excerpted from Men’s Health
