Let's take a look at whether celery has negative calories.
People looking for a quick fix for weight loss might turn to negative-calorie foods. They often
cling to these foods in order to shed a few pounds by burning calories as they chew the food items. By definition, negative-calorie foods are the ones that actually consume more calories than the body to handle and process than the calories contained in the nutrient content of the food.
You might have heard from a lot of people that celery has negative calories, which means that eating it burns off more calories than your body gets from eating it. Nonetheless, celery is a low-calorie food item, and it is quite helpful if you're aiming at maintaining a healthy weight or losing those extra pounds; it is not necessarily a “negative calorie” food.
Calories in celery
As per the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Nutrient Database, a medium-sized stalk of celery provides about 6 calories to the body of the person who consumes it. Apart from that, the same portion of celery has about 1 gram of total carbohydrates and 0.6 grams of fibre. The calories provided by protein, sugar, and fat in it are almost negligible. So, it is undoubtedly an extremely healthy choice of a food item.
Thermic effect of celery
The total number of calories the body burns by eating and digesting food is called its thermic effect. It is about 10 percent of a person's total daily energy expenditure. It means if you are consuming a total of 2000 calories in a day, your body will burn 200 of those calories in eating and digesting that food. Therefore, if you have a medium-sized celery stalk with 6 calories in it, your body will burn 1 calorie in digesting it.
What's the bottom line?
While celery is a low-calorie food, it doesn’t give you negative calories. That is not possible. While theoretically, negative-calorie foods can exist, there is no proven fact that certain foods cause “negative calorie” effects. Some of us might be unaware that protein is the macronutrient that aids your body in burning the most calories. So that is more beneficial in the bigger perspective. Also, fibre is not absorbed by your body, so with a stalk that contains 6 calories and 0.6 grams of fibre, the chances are that your body will take in some calories, which makes the whole concept of negative-calorie foods redundant.
