Are there "negative energy foods"? A truth analysis of three types of food.

Special focus 9: Are there any "negative energy foods"?

Many people have heard that when trying to lose weight, you should eat "negative-calorie foods," which will make you lose weight the more you eat!

I did some research online and found that besides zero-calorie drinks like cold water, green tea, chrysanthemum tea, and black coffee, there are also some natural foods that are considered "negative-calorie foods," such as fruits and vegetables like apples, pears, papayas, strawberries, spinach, celery, green peppers, kelp, bamboo shoots, cucumbers, lettuce, and cabbage, as well as root vegetables like snow lotus fruit and skim milk.

The claim circulating online is that these "negative-energy foods" contain very little or no energy. Chewing and digesting these foods requires more energy from the body than they provide, thus creating a negative energy balance. Furthermore, the more you eat, the easier it is to lose weight.

Is this claim really reliable?

After careful analysis, I found the situation to be quite complex and cannot be dismissed lightly with the word "rumor." Here, I will categorize the "negative energy foods" circulating online into several types and explain them one by one.

Category 1: Non-energy drinks such as cold water, green tea, chrysanthemum tea, and black coffee.

If these zero-calorie drinks contain neither sugar nor oily ingredients like creamer, then they are indeed "negative-calorie" in a sense. However, they may not actually make you lose weight.

Drinking a large glass of cold water requires the body to raise its temperature to match body temperature (37°C), which does indeed consume several thousand calories. From this perspective, saying that cold water has a negative energy balance isn't entirely unfounded. However, for people trying to lose weight, achieving a negative energy balance of several hundred calories per day is essential. Therefore, even drinking 10 glasses of cold water wouldn't make much difference.

Green tea and chrysanthemum tea, without added sugar, honey, fruit, or dried fruit, are virtually calorie-free. Tea is rich in polyphenols, and consuming large amounts of these substances can reduce the activity of various digestive enzymes such as amylase, protease, and lipase, and increase the excretion of fatty substances in the large intestine. Therefore, it can hinder the digestion and absorption of other foods to some extent. From these two perspectives, green tea and chrysanthemum tea do indeed provide a negative amount of energy to the body.

However, for people with normal digestive and absorptive functions, drinking two or three cups of tea will have no effect, unless they drink large amounts of strong tea every day.

Coffee and strong tea have similar effects; excessive consumption can impair digestion and cause excitement, slightly increasing the basal metabolic rate and thus boosting energy expenditure. In other words, while coffee itself doesn't provide energy, it increases the body's energy expenditure, making it arguably a "negative energy" source. This is why black coffee is a staple in some international weight-loss diets.

However, the body's ability to metabolize caffeine varies from person to person, due to both genetic and physical differences. For people with a high metabolic rate, drinking two or three cups of black coffee will not have a noticeable stimulating effect. A small number of people are particularly sensitive to caffeine and may experience various discomforts such as palpitations, dizziness, stomach pain, and insomnia after drinking it. These individuals should avoid coffee.

Category 2: Various fruits and vegetables.

These foods are indeed very low in energy, containing negligible amounts of digestible protein and fat, as well as very little digestible carbohydrates. A large proportion of the dried components in fruits and vegetables are dietary fiber or oligosaccharides that the human body cannot digest or absorb (for example, the sweetness of yacon mainly comes from fructooligosaccharides), which can create a feeling of fullness. At the same time, some components in fruits and vegetables, such as polyphenols, can reduce the activity of digestive enzymes in the human body.

Eating more low-energy fruits and vegetables reduces your appetite for other foods, thus lowering your overall calorie intake. From this perspective, various fruits and vegetables do indeed help prevent weight gain, and calling them "negative-energy foods" isn't entirely unfounded. In other words, replacing high-energy, low-fiber, easy-to-chew, and portion-difficult-to-control foods with low-energy, high-fiber, and filling foods can be somewhat beneficial for weight control.

I've said many times that discussing whether a certain food makes you fat or whether it's a negative-energy food is largely meaningless when it comes to food in its natural state. This is because it's impossible for humans to consume only one type of food. Humans have limited appetites and need to eat many different kinds of food each day. If you eat too much of some foods, you'll inevitably eat less of others, thus altering the proportions of your food intake. This change in proportion affects the risk of weight gain, the risk of various chronic diseases and cancer, and also impacts your overall health and vitality.

The third category includes oats, black sesame seeds, and almonds.

A simple check of the food composition label reveals that these foods are all high in calories. 100 grams of sesame seeds and 100 grams of almonds both contain over 500 kcal, and 100 grams of oats contain over 360 kcal. How can these foods be considered "negative calorie foods"? This is truly perplexing.

Indeed, these types of foods can provide our bodies with a lot of energy. However, replacing some white rice and white flour with ingredients such as oats, beans, and nuts can still help control weight.

Many people ask, "Why is it that oatmeal, which has slightly more calories than white rice and white flour, is said to help with weight loss?"

In fact, there is no necessary connection between the amount of energy contained in food and whether it promotes obesity.

On the one hand, research has shown that foods with identical energy content on their composition tables can be utilized by the body in vastly different ways. The energy content of food is calculated based on the protein, fat, and carbohydrate (including starch and sugar) content, assuming that these components can be fully digested and utilized by the body. In reality, some natural foods do not have such a high rate of digestion and absorption.

For example, nuts such as almonds, apricots, and hazelnuts have a dense texture and cannot be completely chewed. As a result, 10% to 20% of them cannot be fully absorbed by the body and end up in the large intestine. Foods such as red beans, oats, and buckwheat contain high levels of resistant starch, which also enters the large intestine, and only a portion of their energy is absorbed by the body.

On the other hand, humans ingest food to obtain energy. So where does this energy go? Ideally, it should keep the body energized, allowing for energetic running and tireless work. However, if this energy isn't used for vital activities and daily life, but instead leaves people feeling lethargic and exhausted, ultimately being stored as fat, that's truly worrying. Foods like oats, beans, and nuts provide "slow-release" energy. During slow digestion, they are gradually released along with various vitamins and minerals, ensuring a stable supply of nutrients for the body over a long period, thus promoting energy. Simultaneously, they don't provide the body with large amounts of glucose that it can't immediately use, preventing the body from storing it and synthesizing fat.

We don't need to worry about whether food is "negative in calories." As long as we pay attention to consuming enough fresh fruits and vegetables, more whole grains, legumes, and nuts, and control our intake of oil, sugar, and refined starch, we can effectively prevent weight gain. Girls who are trying to lose weight don't need to avoid pure oatmeal just because it has more calories than white rice. However, they should be wary of ready-to-eat breakfast oatmeal products that contain added oil, sugar, and other ingredients and have a fragrant and crunchy texture.