Food and Hunger

Hikers typically burn around 6,000 calories a day, or approximately 3x the average daily human intake. This leads to an unsatisfiable appetite that's a stoned anorexic's dream. You can eat whatever you want and you're hungry again a few minutes later. Some hikers (and some of the towns along the trail) reinforce this, and there are a lot of food challenges, like "eat the whole pizza and it's free". I've passed on most of these, but did do the one that is most famous among the hiker community: the Half Gallon Challenge. At a small store almost exactly halfway through the entire AT (in Southern PA)hikers can celebrate completing half of their journey by eating a half gallon of ice cream. It's over 3,000 calories (or again 1.5x what most people eat in an entire day) and I ate it in 34 minutes. And was hungry again and ate some peanuts within an hour after finishing it. It was actually great fuel and I did one of my highest (miles) days the day I ate it.