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Negative Calories

Peterson

Critical Thinker
P
Joined
Oct 31, 2002
Messages
457
Is it true that for certain foods (i.e. celery), your body burns more calories processing it than it actually has. I did a google search and found mostly diet sites and sites about eating disorders. This is the only one that said it was a myth:

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Pages/webster/familyjulyaugnewsletter.pdf

I may have my percentages wrong but for protein/carbohyrates, you body will burn about 30% processing it. So for celery you would end up w/ about 4.2 calories. Is this right?
 
Dear God,

Let this be true about peanut butter.

Thanks in advance,
hgc

....

Got my answer. He said if you consider exercise a food, then that's the one that burns calories!
 
hgc said:
Dear God,

Let this be true about peanut butter.

Thanks in advance,
hgc

....

Got my answer. He said if you consider exercise a food, then that's the one that burns calories!
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Nope. Not peanut butter. :) Psylotum fibre, maybe. :)
 
Originally posted by hgc

Dear God,

Let this be true about peanut butter.

Thanks in advance,
hgc
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I wouldn't want that. My doctor told me gain 8 pounds and I was using peanut butter to help me out. I don't expect any sympathy but she said I should try to eat about 3000 calories a day.
 
zakur said:
There is actually a reducing diet based on peanut butter: Amazing Peanut Butter Diet

And the book, of course.
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My hopes have been dashed on the rocks of calorie-counting.
But here's the hitch: Unless you're experienced in nutrition, designing an eating plan that packs in peanut butter plus all the nutrients you need without going overboard on calories can be extremely tricky. If you don't watch your calories, you will gain weight. A calorie is still a calorie. Eat more than you burn up, and watch that scale climb--fast.
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I have the number of a nutritionist. I think I'll see anyway if she can design a pb&j diet for me.
 
Sounds like a bunch of BS to me (the peanut butter diet). All she is doing is incorporating the calories from the peanut butter into a diet. The peanut butter I have is 190 calories. If I was going to restrict myself to 2000 I would have 1810 left for the day. You could do this with any food (chocolate, burgers, etc.).

I think the reason people buy into these goofy diets is because they don't understand what a calorie is. People think of them as these mysterious demons that haunt them.
 
Peterson said:
Sounds like a bunch of BS to me (the peanut butter diet). All she is doing is incorporating the calories from the peanut butter into a diet. The peanut butter I have is 190 calories. If I was going to restrict myself to 2000 I would have 1810 left for the day. You could do this with any food (chocolate, burgers, etc.).

I think the reason people buy into these goofy diets is because they don't understand what a calorie is. People think of them as these mysterious demons that haunt them.
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Oh, absolutely. I know I can have a peanut butter sandwich. I just have to resist the temptation to wash it down with a 6-pack and follow it up with a whole apple pie.
 
Peterson said:
Sounds like a bunch of BS to me (the peanut butter diet). All she is doing is incorporating the calories from the peanut butter into a diet. The peanut butter I have is 190 calories. If I was going to restrict myself to 2000 I would have 1810 left for the day. You could do this with any food (chocolate, burgers, etc.).

I think the reason people buy into these goofy diets is because they don't understand what a calorie is. People think of them as these mysterious demons that haunt them.
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I don't agree with this at all. If I eat 200 calories from, say, carrots, it's going to be better for me than 200 calories from chocolate.

A calorie is not JUST a calorie, because calories aren't the only pertinant measurement when analyzing food. Also, this diet doesn't claim to be some miracle diet based around peanut butter, it seems to me to be a diet that a peanut butter lover can have and still lose weight.
 
Well, a calorie is just a calorie. Like a meter is just a meter. The difference is how the body expends and stores calories from different foods. If you eat 200 calories of carrots and 200 calories of chocolate, your body will probably say, "I'm going to burn these carrot calories for energy now and save these chocolate calories for later." It's more efficient to store fat calories directly into body fat.

I'm suddenly hungry. :)
 
Well, a calorie is just a calorie. Like a meter is just a meter.
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Good analogy.

I'll walk a few kilometers down the street, and you walk up Mt. Everest.

They're the same, right?
 
uneasy said:
Well, a calorie is just a calorie. Like a meter is just a meter. The difference is how the body expends and stores calories from different foods. If you eat 200 calories of carrots and 200 calories of chocolate, your body will probably say, "I'm going to burn these carrot calories for energy now and save these chocolate calories for later." It's more efficient to store fat calories directly into body fat.

I'm suddenly hungry. :)
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Not exatcly...

A calorie is a calorie, granted, but there's also the issue of work to extract the calorie of fat, carbohydrate or protein. These three nutrients are the energy-containing ones (technically, so does ethanol, but it shouldn't make up siginifcant portions of one's diet :rolleyes: ). Getting to the calories might take a bit of work.

Take celery. The caloric content of celery is less than the energy it takes to chew and digest it. In fact, an average of 10% of ones caloric intake goes to processing that intake.

This is part of the reason why strict vegetarians tend to be skinnier; all that damned fiber they have to chew through to get to the calories.

So to a certian extent, the structure holding the calorie has something to do with the content you get out of it.
 
If you want to get technical, a calorie is a measure of heat. Obviously eating carrots would be healthier than other foods but if your body is going to store a calorie from chocolate it will do it the same as those from healthier foods. It's just a question of what is easier for your body to convert. If you eat 3000 calories of carrots, there would obviously be too many for the average person and it will store the extra as fat, but would have to work harder to do so then for fatty foods so less would be stored.

But when people count calories, they are counting what is on the box which ,as far as I know, does not take this into account. Hence the peanut butter diet is basically the same concept as Weight Watchers or other similar diets.
 
Hence the peanut butter diet is basically the same concept as Weight Watchers or other similar diets.
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Yes, it's a calorie counting diet. What people seem to miss is that the diet is meant for people who love peanut butter and want to include it, rather than using the peanut butter as a medium for weight loss itself.
 
LaserCool said:


Not exatcly...

A calorie is a calorie, granted, but there's also the issue of work to extract the calorie of fat, carbohydrate or protein. These three nutrients are the energy-containing ones (technically, so does ethanol, but it shouldn't make up siginifcant portions of one's diet :rolleyes: ). Getting to the calories might take a bit of work.

Take celery. The caloric content of celery is less than the energy it takes to chew and digest it. In fact, an average of 10% of ones caloric intake goes to processing that intake.
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I have read two things about negative calorie foods, and they are somewhat contradictory.

The first is that the 'more calories to digest than there actually are in the food' thing only applies for small quantities of food. Once you start eating (and the digestive system gets going), the amount of energy expended in digestion is less. So they are negative calorie, but only in small amounts

Secondly, I know I read somewhere that official calorie counts (ie the USDA database) already take into account the number of calories used in the digestive process. For example, one gram of protein in nutrional calculations is considered to have 4 calories. Protein actually has 6(? - can't remember the exact number) calories per gram, but taking into account the calories used in digestion, protein has 4 'usable' calories per gram. So the calorie counts we get for foods are already adjusted for the number of calories used in digestion.

I have no cites for any of this, I just know these are things I've read on the subject. I could have sworn Snopes had a page on this, but I can't find it.
 
I'm suspicious of equating a 100 calorie portion of sugar with a 100 calorie portion of alfalfa sprouts.

I tend to think it takes a bit more work to process the alfalfa than it does to process pure glucose.
 
There's not a lot of info on the internet regarding negative calories. Has there ever been a study? One site said that apples had negative calories. Considering they have about 50, I would find it hard to believe. I was eavesdropping on a pro anorexia site and a girl mentioned this as well, she wanted to know if she could get away with eating a few apples a day (these are about the most depressing sites you will ever see, not recommended).

I was interested to know if the calorie counts on packages reflect the energy required for digestion. I found this link:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/Classics/ah74.pdf

No time to read it right now but the USDA has this to say:

The Atwater system uses specific energy factors which have been determined for basic food commodities. These specific factors take into account the physiological availability of the energy from these foods. The more general factors of 4-9-4 were developed from the specific calorie factors determined by Professor Atwater and associates. For multi-ingredient foods which are listed by brand name, calorie values generally reflect industry practices of calculating calories from 4-9-4 kcal/g for protein, fat, and carbohydrate, respectively, or from 4-9-4 minus insoluble fiber. The latter method is frequently used for high-fiber foods because insoluble fiber is considered to provide no physiological energy. If the calorie factors are blank or zero for an item in the Database, energy was calculated by recipe from ingredients or was supplied by the manufacturer
From:http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Bulletins/faq.html#4-9-4
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I looks like they already take it into account, unless I'm misreading it.
 
LaserCool said:

Not exatcly...
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I said the form of the calories determines how food is expended or stored. You said the form the calories in affects how much energy is expended to eat and digest it. Those are two different things, so I'm not sure what that "not exactly" is about.
 
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