There are many questions, facts, myths, and arguments revolving around the concept of a negative calorie and what exactly the negative calorie foods diet entails. The negative calorie diet, also often referred to as the zero calorie diet (not to be mixed up with the cabbage soup diet, raw foods diet, or grapefruit diet, all of which are variations of the negative calorie foods diet), is as popular as it is controversial.

It is popular because many dieters have had great success with this eating plan, and it's controversial mostly because of the concept of "negative calories" as well as many people's misinterpretations of what this phrase actually means.

The concept of a "negative calorie" isn't that a food has an inherent caloric deficit. That would be impossible. The idea behind the negative calorie diet is that there are certain foods (all of which are fruits or vegetables) that provide less calories to the body than the body uses to actually digest them.

This is what the concept of negative calorie foods and caloric deficits are all about. The idea is that you can eat a lot of certain types of food and still lose weight because your body will spend more calories burning negative calorie fruits and negative calorie vegetables than they will receive from the food itself.

Is this information about the negative calorie diet correct? Are the lists of negative calorie foods really helpful, or is this all a scam? Well the answer is a little more complicated than that. As for the exact question of do foods have actual negative caloric values, the answer is no, they don't. This is most likely the result of a misinterpretation between "calorie" with a small c, and "Calorie," which is actually a kilocalorie.

So while digesting an apple might take 200 calories (small c), that doesn't come close to the 100 Calories (kilocalories) that an apple provides. This is the difference educated people refer to when they say the concept of negative calories are a scam.

That being said, the negative calorie foods diet works! It doesn't work because there are actual foods with negative calories, but the diet has helped tens of thousands of people lose weight because these foods don't have fat.

They also don't have cholesterol, and are loaded with fiber and digestive enzymes that help process the food through your system, and tend to be lower in calories. The foods that are labeled negative calorie foods are a who's who of the best fruits and vegetables that you can have in any fat busting diet.