Do foods that speed up metabolism really exist? I have heard that they do. Or is it simply that these foods that boost metabolism create their influence by causing your metabolism to work harder instead of faster?

To start with, what are we comparing these metabolism boosting foods against? Before you begin to say there are foods that speed up metabolism, you have to have some sort of control group for comparison.

In our busy, daily lives, many of us eat ready-to-eat processed foods so, for the sake of this article let’s use these as the control group to compare our metabolism boosting foods with.

Generally ready-to-eat foods are so refined they are a simple matter for us to process and turn into energy. So, you could be forgiven for thinking, surely this is good? Actually no, not really. As we have all been told, processed foods are not at all good for us because they are packed full of refined sugar, salt, fat – you name something that’s not good for you and the chances are it’s in your chosen processed food.

Let’s face it, our bodies evolved to metabolize and digest foods as nature intended so it is obvious that there are likely to be complications if we interfere with that natural state too much. Consequently, all these negative side effects from processed foods create problems for our metabolism. With our bodies filled with toxins and fats, our digestive systems barely manage to cope, and the effect is our metabolism slows down.

So, on the other hand, it would seem to be true to say that just about any non-processed food (i.e. natural food) would increase your metabolism! In fact, that looks to be just about spot on. After exhaustive investigation into metabolism boosting foods, it looks as though there is one common factor amongst all of them. That is, quite simply, that they are in their natural state.

Rather than list them one by one, I have divided them into three simple groups to demonstrate metabolism boosting foods.

Fruits and Vegetables.

Followers of Vegetarian and Raw Food lifestyles will vouch for this I am sure – because they contain complex carbohydrates and fibre, fruits and vegetables need more energy to digest than processed foods. This energy comes from metabolism which speeds up to cope.

Lean Proteins.

Fish, Chicken and Turkey are the best providers of lean protein as they develop naturally with less fat than red meats. Research has indictaed that protein helps to increase metabolism because just like fibre it is less easily digested and therefore burns more energy to digest.

Hot Spices

Cayenne Pepper and Chillies have been proven to temporarily speed up metabolism for about 3 hours because they have thermagenic properties which cause your body to heat up (remember how you break into a sweat if you eat hot chillies?) after you eat them by causing your body to produce more stress hormones which increase your heart rate and, consequently, your metabolism.

If you look closely it appears to me that although the thermagenic foods do really make your metabolism speed up, generally foods that ‘speed up’ your metabolism do not so much speed things up as make your metabolism work harder to create the end product.

Ultimately I guess it doesn’t matter if our metabolism speeds up or works harder. The final effect is that extra calories are used to carry out the process of metabolising these foods, so there is less excess energy to be turned into fat.

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