Teenage boys have huge appetites: study

New York: Parents of teenage boys now have evidence to back up the claim they could be eaten out of house and home with a US study finding 14-17 year-old boys will eat a lunch of 2,000 calories given the chance.

Researchers from the US National Institute of Child Health and Human Development said teenage boys have a reputation for packing it away but there had actually been little objective evidence to confirm that this was the norm.

But in a lunch-buffet experiment involving 204 children ages 8 to 17, researchers found boys routinely ate more compared than girls their own age and boys in their mid-teens were the most ravenous — downing an average of nearly 2,000 lunch calories.

Researcher Dr. Jack A. Yanovski said the pattern made sense, given that boys usually hit their growth spurt in late puberty.

"There's a lot of folk wisdom that says boys can eat prodigious amounts, but we haven't had much data," Yanovski said.