CALORIC DEFICIT FROM EATING?
With ingredients containing virtually no calories, is it then possible to eat a negative-calorie meal? The concept is increasingly popular among people who are trying, for example, to adopt a healthy lifestyle or lose weight, observed consultant gastroenterologist Andrea Rajnakova.
They believe that certain foods require more energy to digest than the caloric content of the food itself, she said and cited celery, lettuce, tomato and watermelon as examples.
But there are some misconceptions about this weight-loss method, cautioned Rajnakova, who detailed how the energy required to metabolise food — the “thermic effect” of food — accounts for a very small portion of the body’s energy expenditure.
“If we’re (taking) these sorts of foods as a part of our diet, the contribution of the thermic effect of the meals is so negligible that we won’t be able to expect any weight changes,” she said.