I was almost waiting for someone to say this about celery (or diet coke like I have heard elsewhere!) and you have! Yes, celery might just actually qualify as a “food” that needs more calories (during digestion) to metabolize than it provides in the first place (this is because although celery does have energy, it is mostly cellulose, which is not usable by the human body).

But if you do a little more research you will realise a few things:

1. Yet as enticing as all this sounds, the dietary bankroll built by this approach would be very small, probably amounting to no more than a few dozen calories a day.

2. There have been those who have taken this tiny sliver of truth and used it to form the basis of what they tout as “negative calorie diets,” proving once again that anything can form the core of a diet plan someone wants to sell to others, provided it contains a notion that so much as vaguely sounds like it might work and weds it to the promise of easy, quick, effortless, and pain-free weight loss.

But further down the article is some good news too:
But in defense of celery, we note that even if it doesn’t contribute mightily to a caloric imbalance which serves to work waistline magic, those who are eating it aren’t eating something else. Sometimes the key to a successful reducing plan is not so much the ingestion of “good” foods as it is the avoidance of “bad” ones. And it’s hard to sneak a chocolate bar into a mouth that’s busy chewing celery.

So don’t worry so much about negative calories and trying to “lose weight by eating” – I can personally guarantee you that (alone) will not work.

In other words your jaw muscles should be the last ones you use for weight loss!

-FM