Dieters rejoice! Celery really IS calorie negative

TALES that it burns more calories than it contains have long had dieters reaching for a stick of celery.

But now an investigation by scientists has proven celery really is calorie negative.

The first ever experiment to test whether a calorie negative food exists revealed celery is a powerful weight loss aid – burning up to double the calories it contains. Researchers from the Universities of Coventry and Warwick placed Channel 4’s Food Unwrapped presenter Matt Tebbutt in a metabolic ‘calorie chamber’, which measured every calorie burned while he was fed celery over 12-hour period.

He was fed 326g of raw celery and a celery smoothie, both worth 53 calories. The results showed he burned 72 calories while eating the solid celery and 112 calories drinking the liquidised celery. It means the stick had a ‘negative calorie count’ of 19 while the liquid had a negative count of 59.

Dr Tom Barber, of Warwick, said: ‘If you liquidise that celery, that breaks down all that fibre and you release the nutrients which gives the liver more work to do.

‘You would expect to lose weight. This is, in other words, negative calorie food.’ Celery is approximately 75 per cent of water and 25 per cent fibre. Apart from aiding weight loss, it has a number of other health benefits.

Studies have shown it acts as an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, which can help improve blood pressure and cholesterol levels and prevent heart disease. It also contains immune-system boosting vitamin C.

Food Unwrapped is screened on Channel 4 at 9pm on Monday.