The negative calorie diet has a somewhat misleading name, because it's not based on the concept of consuming non-calories. Rather the name refers to the effect food can have to decrease overall calorie consumption. People on negative calorie diets reduce their overall weight rather fast. Anyone interested in going on a negative calorie diet should learn all the facts before starting.
Identification
A negative calorie diet is not as much a structured diet as a list of recommended foods that contain a great deal of fiber, which tends to make people feel physically full quickly and thus reduces the frequency of normal hunger pangs. Negative calorie foods are mostly fruits and vegetables, including apples, berries, broccoli, cucumbers, lettuce and oranges.
Function
Digestion of specific kinds of foods requires different numbers of calories. Because negative calorie foods are high in fiber, the body has to burn a lot of calories just to digest them. Therefore, when you eat a negative calorie food, you do not actually gain the number of calories listed on the nutrition label. Instead you get the calories listed minus the cost of digestion. For example, digestion of a 200-calorie brownie might require 10 calories, so you gain 190 total calories. Eating 200 calories worth of bananas, on the other hand, might cost your body 100 calories for digestion, so you gain only 100 calories. Even if two foods have similar caloric contents on paper, they may not be calorically equal in the body.
Benefits
Consuming negative calorie food items benefits you not only in terms of losing weight. Because this type of diet includes many fruits and vegetables, it is high in essential vitamins and minerals that help prevent the development of chronic diseases and certain types of cancers.
Considerations
People on negative calorie diets should be careful not to overdo it. If they limit their diet to negative calorie foods, they may indeed lose weight but could end up malnourished. It is important to take a balanced approach to this diet. While eating some negative calorie foods to lose weight is a healthy choice, eating only these types of foods is destructive to the body. The body still needs an adequate amount of healthy fat and at least 60 to 80 grams of protein per day.
Warning
It is important to keep in mind that there is no scientific proof confirming the effectiveness of negative calorie diets.
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