When an item of food requires more calories to eat and digest than are contained in the food, some people consider those foods as having negative calories. Oranges are one fruit of many on the negative calorie list. However, the notion that some foods have negative calories hasn't been proved by science, says Mayo Clinic preventive medicine specialist Dr. Donald Hensrud.
About Negative Calories
Negative calorie foods are foods that purportedly take more caloric energy to chew, process and digest than stick with you in the end, leading to the next theory of negative foods: That you can lose weight by eating them, says Hensrud. According to a July 2006 article in The New York Times, oranges don't top the list of negative calorie foods -- green vegetables with a high water content do. Those vegetables include lettuce, celery, cabbage and cucumbers.
What Experts Say
According to Hensrud, difficult to digest foods enjoy the reputation as negative calorie foods, using an example a 25 calorie broccoli floret, which purportedly requires 80 calories to consume. Hensrud goes onto state that you expend 10 percent of your daily energy digesting food, so low-calorie fruits and vegetables could, in theory, be considered negative calories foods. Cathy Nonas, a diabetes and obesity specialist at North General Hospital in Harlem, New York, told The New York Times that eating some low-calorie fruits and vegetables may result in a difference that can only be described as negligible. Unless oranges, celery and lettuce are used as a substitute for more calorie-heavy snacks, they would have no effect on weight loss. Furthermore, as Hensrud and Nonas point out, no studies indicate that specific fruits and vegetables indeed have negative calories.
Oranges and Other Foods
Lists of negative calories foods pervade the Internet, and oranges are on many of them, along with other fruits such as grapefruit and other citrus fruits, apples, berries, melons and tropical fruits like mango, pineapple and papaya. Negative calorie vegetables include asparagus, carrots, celery, broccoli, cauliflower, turnips, zucchini and leafy greens.
Oranges and Diet
Many of the foods you see on negative calorie lists can help you lose weight, if you use them as part of a healthful eating plan, says Hensrud. A medium orange contains 80 calories and doesn't have any fat or sodium. A good source of dietary fiber, an orange also gives you more than 100 percent of your daily value for vitamin C, based on a 2,000-calorie diet, along with other essential nutrients such as folate, pectin and potassium.
Healthy Weight Loss
Unfortunately, no foods can permanently increase your metabolism or burn fat, nor can they cause you to lose weight, says the Weight Control Information Network. To lose weight, cut back on the number of calories you consume every day, no matter what food source they come from, and exercise daily.
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