I was going to say the same thing! My husband is 43, not overweight, not crazily active. He’ll make himself 5 or 6 sandwiches for lunch every day. It cracks me up! We go through insane amounts of bread. I’m a bit scared about the rapidly approaching teenage years for my two boys. My eight year old is rail thin (95th percentile in height, 30th in weight) and eats four times more than I do. He ate a huge plate of spaghetti and meatballs last night, then went back for seconds and ate all that.
Oh my god yes. I had a heavily manual labor job [ machinist, I was humping around full cases of bronze valve bodies, and an occasional whole major bronze fitting, so I was humping anything from 40 pounds to 250 pounds around my shop] riding dressage and steeplechase competitively, going to school full time and being a teen [did this while I was 16-18] so I was burning through 3-4000 cal a day and eating like a horse. When Mom could coax me home for lunch when Dad was out of town [I was emancipated] I could go through a full box of Kraft dinner, a salad made of a quarter head of lettuce, a couple carrots shredded, 4 or 5 radishes sliced, half a can of garbanzos, a handfull of frozen peas and a large dollop of dressing, and have room for a huge dessert on top.
mrAru is laughing - he and his friend Kurt could clean out his mom’s fridge after school. It was not uncommon to finish off a full baking pan of enchiladas and whatever leftovers were there, then go over to Kurts house and do it again. Their transportation was bicycle, and they worked lots of little jobs ranging from shagging balls at a golf course to working at the gun club doing anything from running the skeet flingers to clearing the ranges of ‘lead’, and mrAru was active in after school sports [he did wrestling, football and swiming]
Kids used to do a lot more physically than now, they really didn’t have much sit on your ass crap like games and internet when we were growing up in the 70s and early 80s. Back before I started working, it was not uncommon for me to do double century weekends on my bike just riding around and hanging out with friends. I frequently would ride from Caledonia to Leroy, back to Caledonia then via Avon over to Fairport, around Rochester, back to Fairport then back to Caledonia and Leroy and then repeat it all the next day. More if we wanted to hit the finger lakes for something like the amusement park and scrumming the farm stands for fruit and veggies to eat. I think the furthest we roamed was Buffalo to the west, Syracuse to the east, the lake as far as Oswego and as far south as Olean. Ah for the days when kids roamed untroubled by pervert paranoia.:dubious:
I’ve been doing this for years for travel, especially for hiking. I’d make a whole loaf of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, put them all neatly back in the bread bag, and take 'em on the trail.
Mine is is going to be 54 this July and eats a half dozen eggs for breakfast, four pieces of toast, half a pound of bacon, 1/3 of a gallon of milk, and 4 or 5 cups of coffee. Three sandwiches for lunch, and last night, he ate an entire 14" pizza. And he is not overweight at all. He’s 180 lbs. 6’2".
I’m glad my son is in the navy now - he ate twice as much as the husband when he was at home - he is 170 lbs. and 6’ 4" - let the government feed him! 
Yeah, when my brother and I were teenagers, we went through around six gallons of milk a week. Good thing we lived near a dairy…
I’m not a big man, 5’7, 160 lbs (athletic build) and I STILL put away tons of food a day. That started around 15 or so and at nearly 32 I’m just starting to slow down on food intake. It isn’t that I don’t have the capacity, it’s that I realize that I don’t need as much anymore, and that yes, there really will be more food later.
I ate like this, but if you watch carefully, you will find boys do not eat as constantly as you think. I might have ate like that for a day, then not eat at all for the next day. I think in the end it balances out, but you don’t notice it as much.
Also boys will eat whatever is in front of them. If you only keep food that has to be cooked, and you don’t have a microwave, you’d be surprised at how little they’ll consume.
As a (chubby) boy, every birthday between the ages of 8 and 14 or so my mom would take me and several of my friends to this mexican all-you-can-eat buffet place called Pancho’s (suburbs of New Orleans), which was my favorite. My favorite food items were the flautas- rolled, fried tortillas filled with meat and spices about the size of a corndog.
My friends and I would have flauta eating contests. I never lost. By the last year, I went against two of my friends- and I beat them- around 33 flautas for me, twenty something for the two of them combined. And I found out later they were cheating (hiding extras under the table).
I only had one sibling (an older brother), but somehow, between the two of us and my dad, every meal seemed like a competition.
It took me a while to learn to not eat like this… I’m overweight now (in my early 30s, though I’m losing weight), but I always feel hungry. I’ve learned to fill the void with fruit. I eat 3-5 oranges and grapefruits most days as snacks.
When I was a kid his age, we had to keep a food journal for one class and track how many calories we consumed. Mind you I was doing sports after school, but I averaged around 8,000 calories a day and gained no weight. A typical day, I would get home and eat several large, full bowls of cereal and consume maybe a half a loaf of bread, either in raw form or with jelly and peanut butter in between. Then we’d eat dinner. I had brothers and sisters, and we’d go through 1-2 gallons of milk everyday.
My teenage son is currently paying me back for this, but at least I only have two teenagers. The daughter is pretty much done growing and also doesn’t eat meat, so she’s a lot less expensive.
My nephew ate a full third of the Christmas roast last year and would have had more only, you know, we only bought one cow’s worth of tenderloin. Watching him eat is like seeing an Olympic athlete do his thing. It’s kind of awe-inspiring.
I was the same way as an elementary school child. My favorite restaurant was a family style Italian place. Whenever we went there, I would order a 20" sausage pizza and I would eat the whole thing. Every time.
And I was a rail thin child.
I also remember going to restaurants with aunts and uncles and family friends and they would get resistant when they heard me order, thinking I didn’t understand how much food I was ordering and sometimes they would force me into a kids meal, which didn’t even dent my appetite.
This ended when I hit puberty, then I began to be satisfied with closer to normal portions…I also wasn’t rail-thin anymore although I was never overweight. Even into my 20’s I could eat tons for junk food without gaining weight.
Now at 55 I can’t finish a normal USA sized restaurant entree.
One issue I have with the “everyone must watch their weight, most people don’t need more than 2000 calories a day” is that they ignore the fact that some people do.
My SO and his brother were both athletes in high school, as was my brother.
It’s best to just stand back and keep moving so you aren’t swept up in the frenzy. My SO swears that is the time picky little boys learn to eat vegetable if they wouldn’t before, because they just want to fill up. I have two little boys that aren’t old enough yet, but I am putting money in a bread and milk savings account now - the ten year old has started showing signs of occasional gorging. I figure when it gets into full swing with both of them we’ll just put them in the basement and lower live cattle to them, a la Jurassic Park.
You can always tell a guy who grew up with brothers by the way they curl themselves protectively around their plate. 
When I met my husband he was still able to eat like a teenager, and it was indeed awe-inspiring. I remember the time he ate his dinner, then he proceeded to finish the dinners of everyone else at the table (with their permission). He calls it “batting clean-up.” I timed him on a cheeseburger once - 45 seconds.
I grew up with one brother and two step brothers and you learn to defend your food and make sure that the first serving you take is sufficient food for you.
I’ve mentioned before that my mother was a terrible cook and that’s mostly what saved me from their ravages. I never ate much at meals, I used to graze on raw vegetables most of the day and only eat enough to be polite at the table. The boys used to make 6 boxes of Kraft dinner as an after school snack for the three of them and were starving when dinner was ready an hour later. Insanity.
You know who can eat more than a teenage boy?
I’m dying, that’s perfect!
I love watching people pack it away. I’m not sure what I find so fascinating but it’s just mesmerizing to watch people eat a ton of food.
The talk of “contests” reminded me of another story: I was in high school when Furr’s Cafeteria went “all you can eat” and ditched the a la carte pricing. Two of my friends and I decided to test that policy out one night.
At the end of the meal, not counting glasses, we had a total of 44 dishes on the table. My friend EJ alone had eaten three full turkey dinners.
There are Pancho’s here in Texas, too.
My husband and his five brothers descended upon a Pancho’s one evening, and proceeded to eat that place out of food. All six of them were in their teens, and all six of them were very physically active. And the six of them were rail-thin (at that time). I gather that it was something like the rabbits in the beginning of Watership Down, where they just vacuumed up the food without regard as to what it was.
. Nope. Not kidding. We were pretty broke at that point in time and my mother fed five of us on one pound of hamburger normally. And THEY WERE TOO Neither family could afford half a pound of hamburger per person. That’s why you have jello salad and potato salad and baked beans.
My husband and I had some twenty-year old boys over for dinner once; one ate about 30 sloppy joes. He also had chips, vegetables, jello and dessert along with a beverage. Just a normal dinner for him.