DR NJENGA: Why teens have a bigger appetite than aging parents

That being said, a number of preliminary points need to be made. The first and perhaps most obvious is the fact that for most people, the balance between the amount of food consumed and the amount of energy expended by the body is often in balance.

In other words, we maintain a constant weight. As long as one eats the amount of food that is equivalent to the energy that he or she spends. If we eat more than one burn then we gain weight.

In children, and even more so in the rapidly growing adolescent, the challenge is twofold and therefore the need for a lot of food.

On the one hand, growing up requires a lot of energy because so many complex changes occur in the body during this time.

In addition, and again, as confirmed by parents of teenagers, children are growing day by day (it seems) new shoes, pants and skirts almost all the terms! In addition to the energy needed for growth, the teenager is gaining weight and must therefore eat more than his parents who do not grow up!

Many teens are also very active and need a lot of energy to run

For the elderly at the other extreme, their energy needs are very minimal since even their movements are very small and, therefore, burn much less energy. As they grow older, they have to eat less and less because they burn fewer calories while they spend a lot of time watching the sunset.

Two things come to mind with this point now.

US President Barack Obama recently grew up in South Africa. At Nelson Mandela's birthday party, he categorically stated that he was surprised to see how much he had money. He also said that he knew that many people present (mostly Africans) had more money than him, and therefore more than ever they would not need a style of life that could be considered opulent. This view sounds good with your question in that one of the fastest epidemics in Africa is obesity in children and adults of the middle clbad

It's an epidemic well reflected by the primitive accumulation of money in Africa. by corrupt means. It is said that such people "eat" public money and thus their obesity. So, and that was the real question of Obama: "How much money is enough?" By extension, how much food is enough? In a sense, and in partial answer to your question, enough food depends on your energy needs as you grow up. While a teenager needs a lot of food to grow up, his less active grandmother will get fat and die of diabetes if she eats as much as the teenager.

The second question that your question raises is that of the biology of food intake, obesity, and healthy eating habits.

There are (unsurprisingly) two conditions in this discussion. The first and least common in Africa is anorexia nervosa – a major crisis in the western world. The second is obesity in children and adults, who has been accused of the double problem of eating too much junk and not doing enough physical activity. There are programs in the UK and in parts of America that aim to ensure all children a minimum of hours of physical activity every day at school.

There are, however, some people for whom genes seem to play a role. great role in weight gain. For these people, the struggle to lose weight becomes almost too difficult and is not affected by anything we have suggested so far. For these people, it seems that some hormones that tell the stomach that it is full of food do not seem to work well. Under the circumstances, the person eats huge amounts of food before becoming aware of a full stomach.

Medical intervention by various surgical means can save life as it could prevent diabetes, hypertension and some joint problems. Some depressed people eat too much.

As you can see, the amount of food consumed is determined by many factors, including age.