Zohreh Gervais thought she might be losing her mind. She could\u2019ve sworn she\u2019d purchased a two-pound bag of baby carrots and a half-litre tub of hummus from Costco the previous day. But as she put lunches together for herself and her two sons, they were nowhere to be found in the fridge.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid we forget them in the car?\u201d she asked her younger son, Zach, who was then 11 years old.<\/p>\n
\u201cTh\u00e9o probably ate it all,\u201d Zach replied, referring to his older brother, who at the time was 15. Impossible, Gervais thought. The jumbo packs were meant to last all three of them a week. Maybe, she rationalized, Th\u00e9o had taken them to his room as a snack and forgotten to bring them downstairs. She asked him if he\u2019d seen them. \u201cI ate them all,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
There is hunger and then there is teenage boy hunger. <\/p>\n
Researchers at Dalhousie University who prepare the annual Food Price Report recently identified 14- to 18-year-old boys as the most expensive demographic to feed in Canada. They estimated<\/a> that in 2025, it would cost $4,809.98 to feed the average boy in this age range, compared to $3,997.09 for their female peers. <\/p>\n There are many reasons for it: The profound physiological changes boys go through at this age that demand more calories, the way much of their socialization centres around food, and the fitness and nutrition ecosystem on social media that pushes macros and powdered supplements. <\/p>\n The Globe and Mail spent time with three teen boys in Canada to understand what this hunger surge looks like: The second dinners, the six-egg omelettes, the protein shakes, the midnight snacks and the UberEats delivery fees.<\/p>\n The math of feeding Th\u00e9o confounds Gervais. A dish meant to serve eight people is demolished in a single sitting. When she doubles a recipe in hopes that she can skip a night of cooking, the extra portions end up devoured as part of an after-dinner snack. Sometimes when they have guests over, she\u2019ll have to tell Th\u00e9o, \u201cYou can\u2019t have six pieces of chicken, you have to leave some for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n In the last two years, Gervais has had to adjust the way she shops, cooks and even stores food at home. It used to be that a $200 grocery delivery \u2013 supplemented by a monthly $500 trip to Costco \u2013 would last her a full week. These days, she has to do a second order on Wednesdays.<\/p>\n School-day breakfasts are rushed most mornings \u2013 a protein bar, yogurt and granola. But on weekends, Th\u00e9o will make himself four slices of toast and four to six eggs. If he\u2019s still hungry, he\u2019ll rustle up whatever\u2019s edible in the fridge \u2013 on a morning this spring, that was leftover clam chowder.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Gervais\u2019s fridge is full today, but even when it is not, Th\u00e9o snacks on what he finds in the pantry: tinned fish, crackers and baking ingredients.Gindalee Ouskun\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Gervais has taken to labelling certain groceries as off-limits to her sons or hiding them: Expensive cheeses, the bulk bag of chocolate chips she uses for baking, cartons of her favourite guava juice.<\/p>\n For Th\u00e9o\u2019s 16th birthday, Gervais grilled up steaks for the family and Th\u00e9o ate three. Another time, she prepared a quiche for dinner and she and Zach each had a slice. She took Zach to piano lessons, came home, and the entire rest of the quiche \u2013 a portion which contained eight eggs \u2013 had been eaten by Th\u00e9o. \u201cI don\u2019t know if he gets full at this point,\u201d she said in an interview.<\/p>\n At an Indian buffet he went to recently, Th\u00e9o loaded up a plate with a heaping portion of rice, naan and various curries and inhaled it in just a few minutes so he could fill up a second. \u201cI try to eat as much as I can quickly, so I don\u2019t feel full,\u201d he explained, flashing me a sheepish grin, his braces glinting. \u201cI felt like I couldn\u2019t walk for a bit after that.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Th\u00e9o, now 6-foot-3, had surpassed his mother’s height before he was finished elementary school. On average, boys gain height fastest at 13.5.Gindalee Ouskun\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Much of Th\u00e9o\u2019s hunger is driven by the massive growth boys undergo during this time in their lives. Their bones are lengthening, lean muscle mass is increasing and organs are expanding. \u201cPeak height velocity\u201d is how pediatricians describe the period when growth in height is fastest, and for boys it hits around age 13.5, on average. In their most rapid window of growth, they\u2019re sprouting about 9.5 centimetres per year.<\/p>\n Th\u00e9o had reached his mother\u2019s height by the time he was 11. Now 16 and six feet, three inches tall, his mother is eye level with his chest. <\/p>\n Gervais shares custody of the boys with their father, and they stay with her on alternate weeks in a stately oxblood house in Winnipeg\u2019s River Heights neighbourhood. Gervais herself eats very little meat the weeks the boys aren\u2019t with her and has tried to offer more plant-based meals at home \u2013 but often faces protest from Th\u00e9o, who is always asking for steak or chicken. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Th\u00e9o’s cardio regimen includes morning runs and cycling. He does weightlifting at the gym several times a week.Gindalee Ouskun\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n In the last year, he \u2013 like so many teen boys \u2013 has been fixated on his protein intake. Gervais has run the numbers to prove that chickpeas and quinoa contain a significant amount of protein. \u201cYou just have to eat more of it,\u201d she tells him.<\/p>\n Th\u00e9o has the height and the wingspan to dominate a basketball court, but has taken a break from the sport he used to play to focus on classical guitar and pumping iron. <\/p>\n He\u2019s at the gym at least three times a week weightlifting for about an hour; he also runs and bikes. Many of these workouts are followed with a protein shake. <\/p>\n The protein powder she\u2019s okay with, but Gervais has been steadfast in her refusal to purchase creatine, an amino acid compound, for Th\u00e9o. She thinks it\u2019s unnecessary and worries about potential health risks.<\/p>\n University of Toronto researchers conducted a survey<\/a> in 2022 of about 2,700 Canadians ages 16 to 30 and found that 82.5 per cent of boys and young men used protein powders and shakes, and 50.3 per cent used creatine.<\/p>\n On social media, fitness influencers extoll the virtues of creatine: How it helps them gain weight, build muscle mass quickly and increases their endurance. Even if you don\u2019t follow these accounts, if you\u2019re a teenage boy, the algorithm will often send them to you as suggested content \u2013 and Gervais has seen this on her son\u2019s phone. <\/p>\n Th\u00e9o is ravenous after his workouts, but he\u2019s also ravenous when playing video games with friends. He wakes up ravenous. With all the organ and bone growth under way in his body, he\u2019s burning a significant number of calories even while resting. <\/p>\n His prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for self-regulation, is still developing, so he\u2019s often craving foods high in fat, sugar and salt. <\/p>\n In Th\u00e9o\u2019s fantasy of grocery shopping for himself, he loads up the cart with pepperoni sticks and instant ramen \u2013 the latter one of his go-tos for a late-night snack. Some nights he\u2019ll eat a packet at about 10 p.m. with two eggs; other times he\u2019ll prepare a box of macaroni and cheese for himself. And when the pantry is empty, he\u2019ll settle for a family-sized portion of baby carrots and hummus. <\/p>\n This fall, Peter Napier will begin his postsecondary education at one of the most prestigious engineering programs in the country, but on a Wednesday evening at his family\u2019s dinner table in Halifax, he made a gross miscalculation about how much filling one can put in a homemade burrito.<\/p>\n The lanky 18-year-old, whose head is crowned with black curls, heaped rice, chicken, guacamole, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and salsa onto a flour tortilla. Like a woman struggling to fasten her favourite pair of jeans over her swelling belly as she enters her second trimester, Napier could not pull the two edges of tortilla over this mountain of filling.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s really two tortillas, you might want to split it,\u201d his mother, Maria Migas, said. \u201cThat\u2019s a big honkin\u2019 burrito.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Napier, soon to enter the engineering program at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., savours outings for pizza or burgers with his Halifax friends, knowing he’ll be far away from most this fall.Darren Calabrese\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n This was dinner one for Napier, which is usually eaten with his family at the dining table. The location of dinner two varies. Sometimes it\u2019s three slices of sourdough bread with peanut butter eaten in the kitchen by the light of his iPhone flashlight after his parents (whose room is beside the kitchen) are in bed. Sometimes it\u2019s a medium pizza consumed on the couch (\u201cHey, should we order a pizza?\u201d he asked his parents as they watched a hockey game at 10 p.m. this past spring and then proceeded to eat most of it himself). Sometimes it\u2019s a Junior Chicken sandwich and medium fries from McDonald\u2019s, eaten with his friends in whichever parent\u2019s car they\u2019ve borrowed for an evening joyride.<\/p>\n In his final year of high school, before his friends scattered to summer vacations and then off to different postsecondary journeys, these outings carried an extra emotional weight.<\/p>\n This past April, Napier met me for lunch at a boutique grocery store downtown that sells made-to-order sandwiches, soups and salads. He ordered a club sandwich with a bottle of spring water and the most popular protein shake on the market: a bottle of chocolate Fairlife Core Power. I was surprised he wasn\u2019t ordering more and he confessed he couldn\u2019t resist joining his friends on one of their ritual lunchtime excursions to McDonald\u2019s, where Napier had ordered a 10-pack of chicken nuggets. <\/p>\n \u201cBut don\u2019t worry, I\u2019m already hungry,\u201d he told me, grinning. <\/p>\n His high school, Citadel, is just a short walk from dozens of fast food restaurants in downtown Halifax. Every day at 11:55 a.m. when the bell buzzes, hundreds of students spill onto the sidewalk for lunch. Some follow their friends into Fresh Slice Pizza and order $3.25 slices of pepperoni, others tap their cards at the ordering kiosk at McDonald\u2019s. <\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Fast-food restaurants are important spaces for teen boys. After Peter and his friends got their licenses, they began going out regularly in the evenings for second dinners and to socialize.Darren Calabrese\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n These outings are fuelled by hunger, yes, but also the pure adolescent need to create inside jokes, to then retell those inside jokes ad nauseam, to dissect a friend\u2019s social media post or last night\u2019s Raptors game. In high school, fast food restaurants become popular third spaces for teens. After Napier and his friends got their licenses, driving to those spots in the evening \u2013 even if they were less than a kilometre away \u2013 only added to the thrill.<\/p>\n He pulled out his phone and scrolled through his banking app to show me \u2013 somewhat self-mockingly \u2013 how almost every transaction he\u2019s made in the last year has been a food purchase. One month, for example, he dropped $452.79 on candy, McDonald\u2019s, sandwiches, burgers, Indian and Lebanese food, as well as a handful of meals from delivery apps.<\/p>\n For so much of his life, basketball was the thing Napier\u2019s life orbited around. His older brother played, his dad coached. This past year, Napier was co-captain of the varsity basketball team at his high school which involved playing every day. For the first 45 minutes after a game, when the adrenaline is still pumping through him, he can\u2019t eat.<\/p>\n \u201cBut then once the 45 minutes is up, I can eat for days,\u201d he told me. After burning a basketball game\u2019s worth of calories, he can consume double what he normally does: Three Costco stuffed peppers, two heaping plates of spaghetti and meatballs, multiple servings of whatever his mom made for dinner plus the leftovers she was planning to pack away in Tupperware for the next day.<\/p>\n This fall, Napier will begin his undergrad in the engineering program at Queen\u2019s University and his time and attention will shift from basketball to academics. He\u2019s leaving his home and his parents and most of his friends. <\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s weird to think that I might not be playing next year,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s kind of like my identity a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n For Dondre Sim, pushing his cart through a cavernous grocery warehouse is like opening presents on Christmas morning, like putting a new blade on a razor. \u201cEvery time I have to go to Costco, it\u2019s the thrill of my day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n To escape a complicated family situation, Sim moved out of his family home into a bachelor apartment in his grade 12 year. He\u2019s responsible for everything, including feeding himself. Roughly every month, a friend takes him to Costco, where he buys $200 to $250 worth of groceries.<\/p>\n Sim, now 18, is hyper-organized on these trips: He gets five vegetables, four protein sources and three types of fruit and then a few snacks. His carbohydrate of choice is jasmine rice and he\u2019s still working through one of the two 18-kilo bags he bought on sale in late December. <\/p>\n Like a legion of suburban momfluencers on TikTok, Sim takes great care to wash, chop and store his vegetables as soon as he gets home to maximize their shelf life, and he portions out the huge trays of chicken and beef into Ziplocs and puts them in the freezer so he has enough protein to last until his next Costco run.<\/p>\n Every potential purchase is subject to a series of questions: How much is in the pack, how many different ways can it be cooked, how will it taste, how will it be seasoned? Beef cubes are versatile, tasty and can be purchased in large quantities, so they usually go in his cart. Shrimp, while delicious, is expensive and usually on sold in small bags and is therefore \u201ca rip-off.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Sim, whose income comes from social assistance and a restaurant job, has to put his grocery money to efficient use as he juggles work, studies and life on his own.Kaja Tirrul\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Life is hectic: In May, when we spoke, Sim was taking an hour-long bus to get from his apartment in downtown Ottawa to his high school in the Nepean area to the west. He had to stay on top of cooking, cleaning, laundry and doing his homework. Many days after school he went to the gym. And twice a week he worked a shift at a nearby ramen restaurant.<\/p>\n Sim, who is Cambodian, is tall and thin with curly black hair and an eyebrow ring. On a weekday evening in the late spring, he stood over a pot that was on a hot plate (his apartment didn\u2019t come with a stove) where he was browning chunks of beef with a homemade curry paste of galangal, lemongrass, turmeric, garlic and lime leaves to make salaw machu kroeung, a Cambodian soup.<\/p>\n Growing up, he watched his parents make a lot of rice-based meals and the first thing he learned to prepare for himself was rice, eggs and soy sauce with cucumbers on the side. His skills have improved considerably since then: He regularly makes stir-fries, noodles and soups. He used to make Thai curries using jarred curry paste from Loblaws but he found them too salty so he switched to making them from scratch in the food processor his girlfriend bought him. <\/p>\n He can\u2019t stand fast food, so on lunch breaks when his friends would go to McDonald\u2019s, he detoured to the nearest supermarket. His friends\u2019 meal combos came to $16, but for $2 less, he\u2019d buy a whole rotisserie chicken. What was a last-minute dinner saviour for the harried parents of young kids was a single-person lunch for Sim. Sometimes he\u2019d have a quarter of the bird leftover and would take it home to use for meal prep the next day.<\/p>\n Many of Sim\u2019s expenses are covered by social assistance. Sim supplements that income with what he earns from the ramen shop. A major perk of the job is getting to use whatever is in the restaurant\u2019s kitchen to prepare dinner for himself during his shift. \u201cIt\u2019s basically all you can eat,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n About 30 per cent of young adults live in food-insecure households, according to a 2021 online survey<\/a> published in the Canadian Journal of Public Health. Sim hasn\u2019t needed to access food banks and he prides himself on being very careful with his money. It pains him to spend frivolously.<\/p>\n There are no impulse purchases of what he calls \u201cdumb food\u201d: chips, cookies, chocolate bars. He never bought Timbits or ice cream cones after school (Sim is lactose intolerant, but still). When he has food cravings, it\u2019s for sushi or the Thai curries he\u2019s become so adept at making. Sometimes he\u2019ll go to one of the many shops in his neighbourhood to have pho. <\/p>\n But he doesn\u2019t want his penny-pinching to dictate what he feeds himself.<\/p>\n \u201cI tell myself I should never budget at a grocery store,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need food to survive. You shouldn\u2019t feel bad for buying food for yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n Food for thought: More from The Globe and MailVideo: What the labels mean at your grocery store<\/p>\n In 2025, many Canadians chose to kick their habits for U.S.-made foods and buy local. But \u2018made in Canada’ and \u2018product of Canada\u2019 don\u2019t mean the same thing. Business reporter Erica Alini outlines what to look for.<\/p>\n The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n The Decibel podcast<\/p>\n Diet advice must be taken with a grain of salt, especially when social media helps harmful fads to spread quickly. Dietitian Christy Harrison, author of The Wellness Trap, spoke with The Decibel<\/a> about how to steer clear of misinformation. Subscribe for more episodes.<\/a><\/p>\n Leslie Beck on nutrition<\/p>\n The four summer vegetables you should be eating now<\/a><\/p>\n Protein from plants, not meat, may help you live longer. Here\u2019s how<\/a><\/p>\n