appetite

How much does a teenager normally eat a day?

When I was a high schooler, I ate little. Some rice and miso soup for breakfast, lunch in a surprisingly small lunch box, small amount of snack after school, then supper. I didn't need to eat so much, and didn't want to eat much either. So I had one 80% full bowl of rice, and some vegetables, proteins, and soup for a supper. I rarely had a second.

Our boarder, 17-year-old girl, always surprises me with the amount of food she eats. From my own experience, I can hardly believe how much she can actually eat in one day.

Her daily appetite is like this:

breakfast(8:00):One big bowl of muesli with nuts, fruits, seeds. Plus two to four slices of rye bread with tomato or avocado on it.
little lunch(11:00)+ big lunch (13:00): One big container of lunch packed with grains and several kinds of vegetables.
snack(4:00):some fruits and rye bread. When she has a time to eat, she eats "snacks" as much as normal supper.
supper(6:30):big plates of food with rice, proteins, vegetables. Usually she has the second full plate.
second supper(around 9:30 or when she comes home):one plate of left over supper or anything she finds in the kitchen.

For me, it is astonishingly over eating, but my husband used to eat like she does, he says.

I know that Westerners have different digestive system than Asians. Their body got used to eat more meat than fish or vegetables, so they have shorter intestines than Japanese. Yes, we Japanese are more like herbivores in terms of our digestion.

So maybe, this appetite is quite normal for Western youngsters.....


I cannot help wondering where all the energy she obtained from foods are going.


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