Written by Ryan Hall
So, I don’t mean to sound negative, but it drives me nuts when I see blatant misinformation pushed on people in an attempt make them feel better about their own poor choices. We make enough bad decisions in our lifetime; sticking your tongue to a pole in the middle of winter, listening to your friends when they tell you that you can easily jump that ravine on your bike, or the ever infamous “dude you gotta try this, we’ve all done it!” Liars! Not that I’ve fallen victims to these…twice. But I’m talking about information regarding our food choices and what is healthy and why. We all know that pizza is bad for us and fruit is good, but let’s make sure we all know why something is good for us and that nothing is free.
As I was walking out of my local fitness center, feeling better that I may have possibly burnt off enough calories to justify the amazing apple induced sugar rush I was going to give myself, a handmade billboard caught my eye. “ZERO CALORIE FOODS!” Low and behold, there is a Heaven, and according to this poster, it is filled with zero calorie apples, bananas, pineapple, celery and almost every other type of fruit and vegetable you can think of. Hallelujah! But then I remembered, wait, this apple in my hand, this gorgeous, ruby red, juicy piece of sweetness named Fuji actually contains about 100 calories with about 30g (90 cal) coming from straight up sugar; fructose to be exact! What! (Not that fructose is bad for you)
Zero calorie foods are a myth people! It has been a thought out there for a long time that there are some fruits and vegetables that require more calories to digest than they actually give. Unfortunately, this is total hogwash. There are foods out there that have very few calories. For instance, a stalk of celery has between six and ten calories. There is a metric called TEF (Thermal Effect of Food) that measures how many calories are used to digest food. Generally speaking, it’s only about 10% to 20%. That means a ten calorie stalk of celery still gives you eight calories even after digestion. So in the case of my delectable Fuji, this means it still “contains” 80 calories after you factor in my tummy doing some work.
I’m not saying that we should all give up on nutritious fruits & veggies and go binging on a swimming pool full of ice cream and donuts; I’m just saying that we need to be properly informed about what we eat. Keep eating those fruits and vegetables, just know that you are consuming calories. So after ripping down the poster and high tailing it out of there screaming “They’re all out to make us fat,” needless to say, I’m looking for a new place to get in shape. Any suggestions?
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