The zero-calorie food thing

[bran987]

This same list shows up about 100 places on the internet:

Negative calorie foods lose fat list of food containing negative calories

They claim that these foods require more energy to digest than the calories contained in the food, so the foods technically have "zero calories".

I can buy it for the veggies, but they have foods like apples/oranges/berries on there too.

I always thought apples/oranges had a lot of sugar in them... but they are on all the lists for zero calories.

Anyone know if that's really true? If an apple has 50 calories, can our body really use up 50 calories just trying to digest an apple?

 

[Captain FT]

Sounds a little off.

Digestion and absorbtion uses about 10%-15% of the calories ingested. So lets say you ate 1 50 calorie apple, about 5-7 calories would be used to digest and absorb it.

I've also read that 27-30% of the calories of protein ingested get used for digestion. This is because protein has to be further broken down by the body into amino acids which takes more energy to do.

I looked at your link and I don't see apples on there and tangerines are different than oranges, the sugar content is lower as are most of the foods on that list. The list makes sense, apples and oranges did not

 

[Foxxxy]

NO such thing! Huge myth!

Source: Is there really such a thing as "negative calorie" foods?

 

[NJL52]

Foods such as celery are mostly indigestible fiber. You get 0 calories out of indigestible fiber. What you can digest is extremely little and you spend more then you get dealing with all the waste.

The article above is wrong.