A 17 year boy can probably eat half a cow... they're still growing. Add heavy physical exercise to the equation and he can probably eat the whole cow. But you'd better stop eating like that when you grow older ...


Eating enough is actually a problem on polar expeditions. The combination of heavy sledge pulling for 12 hours and the increased energy consumption at rest (to a certain degree, the body compensates for low temperatures by burning more calories) means that they just can't eat enough. Børge Ousland and Mike Horn stuffed themselves with about 7K each day on their way to the North pole (in 1996) - and still lost a lot of weight.