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ORGANIZATIONS
Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation. 7890 Broadway,
Lemon Grove, CA 91945. (800) 366-3748.<http://
http://www.price-pottenger.org>.
The Weston A. Price Foundation. PMB 106-380, 4200 Wis-
consin Ave., NW, Washington DC 20016. (202) 363-
4394.<http://www.westonaprice.org>.Margaret Alic, PhDNegative calorie diet
Definition
The Negative Calorie diet is based on the theory
that some foods use more calories to digest than are
contained in the foods and that this can be used to
produce weight loss.Origins
The origins of the idea of negative calorie foods
are not clear. For many years some people have specu-
lated that if a dieter were to eat foods that were hard
for the body to break down, but did not contain very
many calories, that it would take more energy for thebody to process the food than were acquired through
the breakdown of the food.
As of 2007, the Negative Calorie diet is available
as an 80 page downloadable e-book from the website
http://www.negativecaloriediet.com. It is put out by The
Equilibria Group, and is not available as a traditional
book. Dieters must purchase the right to download the
book to their personal computer and then can view the
book on the computer or print it out if they choose.
According to the website the diet has been available
since 1997 and has been followed by thousands of
dieters around the world.DescriptionThe Negative Calorie diet is based on the idea that
some foods are negative calorie foods. The diet does
not claim that the foods actually contain negative
calories, instead the idea is that some foods take
more calories for the body to process and digest than
are contained in the foods themselves.
When a person eats a piece of food the first thing
that happens is chewing and this action consumes
energy. Foods that are higher in stringy fibers, such
as celery, generally require more chewing, and hence
more energy expenditure, than other foods such as
cake which do not require as much chewing. After
chewing, the food is moved down the esophagus and
into the stomach, where it begins to be broken down as
it mixes with stomach acid. Then it is moved into the
small intestine where it is liquefied and absorption into
the body begins. Then the mass moves into the large
intestine where fluids are absorbed and then the resid-
ual mass is excreted.
The Negative Calorie diet believes that this entire
process of digestion uses many calories, and so by
eating foods that are low in calories, and take longer
to digest, the body will actually be using more calories
than are taken by processing the foods. The diet claims
that these extra calories required for digestion are
taken from fat stores in the body, and that the more
of these negative calorie foods the dieter eats, the more
weight will be lost.
The Negative Calorie diet gives, as an example,
the net calorie consumption from eating broccoli. It
says that if you eat a serving of 100 grams of broccoli,
which contains 25 calories, it will take the body 80
calories worth of energy to digest it. This results in a
negative net calorie use of 55 calories which are sup-
posed to be taken from fat stores on the body. As a
counter example the diet says that if a dieter eats a
piece of cake that contains 400 calories, it will take theNegative calorie diet