Celery

Celery has negative calories

The key to weight loss or weight gain is simple: it is all a matter of how many calories you take in and how many calories you burn. If you burn more calories than you take in, then you will lose weight. If you burn the same number of calories as you take in, then you will maintain the same weight. In this equation, celery has come to hold a legendary role among dieters. In contrast to most foods, which add to the calories you take in, celery is reported to have “negative calories.” The idea is that you use up more calories in the act of eating the celery than are actually contained in the vegetable.

It is true that celery can be a great part of your diet when you’re trying to lose weight. An eight-inch stalk of celery contains only six calories. Not much at all, but it does contain some calories. Do we use up that many calories chewing up the celery? Probably not. The body burns roughly eighty-five calories per hour while eating (not so much more than the sixty calories per hour it uses when you are sleeping!). This means that in one minute of eating, you only use up 1.4 calories. It would have to take you several minutes of chewing to burn up the number of calories in a stick of celery, and even though those stringy stalks take some time, it probably does not take you four minutes to chew one piece.

However, you just might use up all those calories in the stick of celery from the process of digesting the celery. Much of celery is a substance called cellulose that the human body does not digest, and which passes through our system without being absorbed. Cellulose is not metabolized by humans, and so your body needs to pass it through to the other end. In the much longer time needed to pass that celery through your system, your body will have used more than the six calories in that piece of celery.

Does this mean that the celery will help you lose weight? Not necessarily. In order to lose a pound of body weight, you need to take in about 3,500 calories fewer than you use up. The six calories in celery and the small calorie deficit that you might get from your body digesting the celery are a far cry from 3,500 net calories used up. And in case you have heard that celery is a special negative calorie food that somehow boosts your metabolism and makes you burn other foods up faster, you should know that there is absolutely no evidence for this. So, the point we’re trying to make here is quite simple: there is nothing magical about celery. Losing weight still requires you to take in fewer calories than you burn. Celery might help you toward your goal, but it is likely to play only a very small role.