Zero Calories!

I let my son pick out a snack when we were at the grocery store this morning, and he picked out a jar of pickles.  I hadn't bought a jar of pickles probably in years, and I figured since they're made from cucumbers, they're probably healthier than a lot of other snacks he could have chosen.  As I was making his lunch later in the day, I pulled a pickle out for myself and munched on it.  I was curious about how many calories it had, so I looked and the label, and I was surprised to see that it had zero!  I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised; as I said, pickles are made from cucumbers after all.  But still, I thought it would have at least some calories.  Wow, I thought.  So during those times when I'm cutting back on sugar and other refined and artificial ingredients, but am craving something salty or savory rather than sweet fruit, I could try a pickle, and will have eaten no calories!  It seemed too good to be true.  Then I though about something I read about water recently.  When you drink water, there are no calories, but since your body uses calories to metabolize the water, it actually has negative calories.  This may not be a new concept to you, and I know I've heard of it before too, but somehow it struck me differently this time, and I wanted to look into it a little more.

So I did a search for "zero calorie foods," and this is what I came up with.  Basically, you can eat as much of the following foods you want, with no guilt:

Vegetables:

Asparagus

Beet Root

Broccoli

Cabbage

Carrot

Cauliflower

Celery

 

Chicory

Hot Chili

Cucumber

Garden cress

Garlic

Green Beans

Lettuce

Onion

Radish

Spinach

Turnip

Zucchini

Fruits:

Apple

Blueberries

Cantaloupe

Cranberry

Grapefruit

 

Honeydew

Lemon/Lime

Mango

Orange

Papaya

Peach

Pineapple

Raspberry

Strawberry

Tomato

Tangerine

Turnip

Watermelon

I'd always believed that even though fruits are healthy, since they do have sugar in them, you should still be careful about not eating too much of them.  But according to different things I've read, this is not true.  My only problem is that while I love most of the fruits mentioned, when I eat fruits a lot, I begin to want things that are not sweet, and I don't like a lot of the veggies mentioned, unless their either covered with cheese or butter.  But I suppose since I'm not diving into some fad diet, it would be ok to add a little something to my veggies, especially if it gets me to eat more of them.  I'm not a fan of fad diets; I don't believe they work, and usually are not healthy.  But I think adding more about foods with negative calories as snacks and sides can only help to make us healthier. 

If you know of any more foods aside from fruits and vegetables that have the "negative-calorie" effect, as long as they're not too processed, let me know.  I'm always up for new suggestions of healthy snacks!