Know why your five-year-old kid demands chocolates or other sugary food all the time? To feed his/her “energy monster” brain.
According to a new study, our bodies cannot afford to grow faster during the toddler and childhood years because a huge quantity of resources is required to fuel the developing human brain. “As humans, we have so much to learn and that learning requires a complex and energy—hungry brain,” said Christopher Kuzawa, a professor of anthropology at Northwestern University’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. A five-year-old’s brain uses twice as much glucose as a full-grown adult.
The study appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .