Vegan Nutrition with Dina Aronson, M.S. R.D.

Dina Aronson, MS, RD is a vegan dietitian whose specialties include chronic disease prevention, vegetarian/vegan nutrition, and lifestyle management. She is the founder and director of VeganRD.com, a nutrition consulting company. Active in many vegetarian nutrition organizations, Dina was the recipient of the American Dietetic Association's Recognized Young Dietitian of the Year Award in 2002.

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Is it true that you lose more calories than you gain when you eat celery?

- Mirna

Dear Mirna,

Yes, it is true. The logic in this thinking is that between the time of chewing and the time of elimination, it takes more energy to process celery than the amount of energy (calories) it contains. But the effect won't be real until about a day later, when the celery's nutrients and water have been absorbed, and its fiber eliminated from your body.

Let's consider what it takes to eat, digest, and eliminate a stalk of celery. A medium stalk of raw celery contains about 5 calories. If you chew that celery for a total of a minute (let's say, 6 bites, chewing 10 seconds for each bite), that burns about 1 calorie. Then, as the celery moves through the stomach, intestines, and bowel, the body uses energy to break down, absorb, and eliminate the celery. I'm not sure how many calories this takes, but given that about 8%, or about 160, of the calories burned per day by the average person is accomplished simply by digestion/absorption/elimination of food, it stands to reason that at least a small portion of this 160 calories is spent on that celery. If that celery stalk represents 5% of your total intake by volume, that's 8 calories used to digest and eliminate it (This is a conservative estimate, since high-fiber foods take more energy to process than low-fiber foods.) So we're up to 9 calories, or a deficit of 4 calories. Congratulations, you just burned 4 calories by eating a stalk of celery!

Disclaimer: The advice given here is for eductional purposes only. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a qualified health care provider.

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