This Is How Many Calories You Really Need To Eat - And It Might Be More Than You Think

Most of us are accustomed to looking at food packets and mentally totting up how much of a dent a snack might put in our daily calorie allowance.

But it’s not quite as simple as all that.

Statistician Nathan Yau shows that some people actually eat far less than they should - as young, active people need more calories than most.

On average, men aged 20 actually consume 400 fewer calories than is recommended - but as we get older, we need fewer and fewer calories.

Yau used the U.S. Department of Health’s recommendations for how much people should eat, depending on their activity level, paired with information from the 2009 -12 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

Yau said, ‘'As you might expect, the average calories for males is higher than for females, but it’s interesting how the male calories ramp up much more at the beginning than for female calories.

‘Also, the female averages after 12 years old always stay under the moderate line, whereas male averages are above the moderate line from mid 20s to late 50s.

'I’m not sure if this is just noise, an artifact of underreporting, or if females really do tend to eat less relative to the estimates. So you can take that with a grain of salt. Although anecdotally that last reason seems possible.

'One thing’s for sure: I need to move more.’