Weekly Wellness

Catabolic foods: negative calorie wonder foods

With the craze of low-fat and fat-free foods, it is easy toforget about real nutrition. Remember your mother telling you toeat your fruits and vegetables? It still holds true, especially forthose looking to lose a little weight.

Recently, people across the nation have started taking notice ofeveryday foods that are catabolic, or foods that require morecalories to digest than to intake. In other words, these are’negative calorie’ foods (ediets.com).

These so-called wonder foods are right under your nose, in manycases. The trick is that these foods are fresh, non-processed, andfound in nature. Here are a few foods that appeal to the pallet aswell as contain valuable nutrients, like vitamin’s C, D, and A.

Watermelon

A summertime favorite, watermelon is not only juicy and full offlavor, but also very healthy. Because a watermelon contains somuch liquid, a lot of the substance of the food, and what makesyour stomach feel full, is water weight.

A bowl full of watermelon contains about 92 calories(caloriesperhour.com) and can be considered a meal, because inaddition to filling a person up, it also contains a portion of thedaily allowance of fiber.

Limes, Oranges, and Lemons

While eating lemons may not sound that good, citrus fruits(tangerines, limes, mangos, lemons, etc.) are some of the bestcatabolic foods out there. In addition to giving the body a hugedose of Vitamin C, citrus foods work well with your body in termsof calorie intake and calorie burning. Like watermelon, thesefruits are very fleshy and contain ‘juice’ that will help fill upthe stomach.

Green Beans and String Beans

A can of green beans, whether heated or eaten cold, contains amere 25 calories. This single portion of food may be a filling mealfor many and drastically cuts down on calories and fat. Since beanscontain few calories and no fat, one may wonder what makes up thisfood. On a label of cut green beans, a serving (one can) containsfour grams of carbohydrates, but a whopping 370 grams ofsodium.

Celery

While it may be seen as a crunchy snack to some, the commonstick of celery does many things for the body. It is not only acatabolic food, but because of its stringy texture, it helps toclean the digestive system. As far as nutritional value isconcerned, celery is filled with fiber, and helps move thedigestive track along (fda.gov).

Seafood

Before you go jumping over to Long John Silvers, the types ofseafood that help your body, rather that fill it with fat, areselect. A few types of seafood, like crabs, oysters, and sea bassare some of the most popular types of catabolic ‘meats’. Be surethan when you eat these types of food, it is a pure form of it, asopposed to crab ragoons, or oysters covered in a rich sauce. Thisis a sure fire way to add protein to the diet, as well as cut downon calories.

All in all, catabolic foods are out there, its just knowing whatto pick. As a guide, basically any fruit or vegetable is consideredcatabolic, because of the water weight and digestive processes thatmust occur.

So next time you are at the store, spend a little more time inthe produce section and your body will thank you, in a variety ofways!