Swimming promise Mikko Kuittinen is never full.
– Mikko just destroyed the buffet table!
A 203-centimeter swimming super promise Mikko Kuittinen has just been to lunch. At his first lunch of the day, to be more precise.
Father Tero Kuittinen reports her son’s insatiable appetite in disbelief.
– Soon Miko will be hungry again, he adds.
Kuittinen is only a 14-year-old teenager, but he already eats like an animal. A young man living in the United States grew as much as 10 centimeters in height in one academic year.
A calorie bomb
A constant concern of a swimmer is his weight. He weighs only 74 kilos, even though he eats two lunches and two dinners a day.
In the winter, Kuittinen’s body mass index was 16, which means dangerous malnutrition. Dad can’t help but wonder how it’s still possible.
Mikko Kuittinen enjoys himself at the dining table. Jussi Eskola
– Damn, that weight just won’t go up. He’s like a skeleton, Tero Kuittinen says.
– I feed him all the time. He burns 4,000 calories a day. He can eat two hamburgers and 12 chicken legs at once. In the evenings he is so tired that he just lies on the couch and I put more food in front of him.
The pace of eating is such that the father cannot possibly cook enough food for his son. Fortunately, the school helps with the matter, whose canteen always makes hunger go away for a while.
– I go to a private school and there is unlimited food available after school. It helps. I can eat as much as I want, whenever I want. Still, I feel like I’m starving all day long, says Mikko Kuittinen.
Everything goes
The kitchen staff is horrified when a swimmer with a gigantic appetite jumps onto the line.
– The cooks are already starting to block me at a certain point!
Sometimes Kuittinen also cooks dinner for himself. Then you don’t save.
– I used to make a big plate of chicken pasta before training, and it was topped with cheese and hot sauce. It would be really unhealthy not to move. You’d gain five kilos in an instant. But I ate such a portion every day, Kuittinen says.
For breakfast, the Finnish promise devours muffins. It may not be the healthiest option, but as stated, excess pounds are not a concern for now.
When Kuittinen is asked what the swimming team’s nutritionists think about his diet, the answer is nothing but laughter. The team does not have such experts. And their advice, on the other hand, doesn’t necessarily apply to this big eater.
Kuittinen returns to the United States to torment the school cooks. Jussi Eskola