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I'm afraid the idea of "calorie-negative" foods is an urban myth. A stick of celery is somewhere between 6 and 10 calories. Chewing and digesting it only burns off somewhere between 0.5 and 2 calories, depending on the person (and what you've eaten it with and how muscular and insulin-resistant you are).If you wanted to make your single stick of celery effectively 0 calories or less, you'd have to chew it for the best part of an hour!Of course veggies can help weight loss, but their value is in filling you up with water and fibre so you eat less of the calorie-dense foods.
Quote from: Silverleaf on January 13, 2016, 16:18:00I'm afraid the idea of "calorie-negative" foods is an urban myth. A stick of celery is somewhere between 6 and 10 calories. Chewing and digesting it only burns off somewhere between 0.5 and 2 calories, depending on the person (and what you've eaten it with and how muscular and insulin-resistant you are).If you wanted to make your single stick of celery effectively 0 calories or less, you'd have to chew it for the best part of an hour!Of course veggies can help weight loss, but their value is in filling you up with water and fibre so you eat less of the calorie-dense foods.Surely the equation should factor in the 20 weeks caring it takes to mature, the amount of energy sapping action taken to cultivate, and cart composts and manure. Not forgetting the countless trips to the communal tap, carrying lots of water at 10 pounds per gallon uphill and across sites just to get the crop to a harvestable size. Also the effort into earthing up, patrolling for pests, keeping down weeds and finally hauling the harvest back home. Never mind food miles, its very energy consuming. Compare with your neighbour who simply emails T**co to arrange a supply delivered to the door. Now they are the folk who get fat!!!
Well it takes about 15 minutes of running to burn off 100 calories, which is 10-15 sticks of celery or about 1 celery plant, I guess (I've never grown it myself so I don't know exactly how many sticks you get). It would be interesting to see what the numbers are, because my initial instinct is to say that I don't think there's any ordinary crop that uses more energy to grow than it gives you when you eat it, unless you garden in a terribly inefficient way. Otherwise why didn't everyone waste away to nothing before we had grocery shops?
If a celery plant took as much effort as a 15 minute run then I wouldn't bother growing it personally.