Are there correlations between amount of muscle built and how much food you eat?
An image from muscle and fitness website.
From what I can tell yes. The more muscle you have and the more well developed your body is the more you eat. Of course, there are other factors like how much energy your body takes from a meal, or if your health prevents you from eating a certain amount. But there is certainly a connection.
Your body is a high maintenance machine that requires a daily amount of energy, vitamins, and minerals to keep itself running. If it doesn't get that from outside, then it has to burn through itself to get them. What exercise does is it breaks down the parts of the body too weak to keep up. Then your cells that are designed to repair your body, look over the damage and try to fix it in a way that prevents this from happening again. This usually results in a toughening and strengthening of your body. Its why your feet skin is naturally tougher than the skin anywhere else on your body, because they have to go through constant wear and tear to keep up with their daily usage, its why you build up calluses over time on parts of your body that are rubbed raw consistently. It is also how muscle gets built up.
However, do you think this comes without cost? Tougher skin requires higher concentration of protective minerals in order to actually get protection. Muscle is the same. If I had a machine that could carry 10 pounds and a machine that could carry 100 pounds which one do you think would take more energy? Which one would be more solid structurally? Most likely the one hundred pound carrying machine, unless the 10 pound carrying machine was way more complex than the 100 pound one. The human body is incredibly complex, so naturally it takes a lot of energy to maintain. If you want to improve it though? As people everywhere know, exercise burns calories, lots of calories.
Once you get up to peak physical fitness, your body is going to be incredibly strong. But in order to maintain your peak its going to require a lot more energy than average. Take the Rock, famous celebrity, Works out a lot, is constantly on the move, and has very strong muscles. How much does he eat? As a matter of fact there are several articles on the internet about The Rock's daily diet. Here is the link for one of them http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3075270/Want-look-like-Rock-Try-eating-like-Former-WWE-champion-s-strict-5-165-calorie-daily-diet-contains-10-pounds-food-including-cod-eggs-steak-chicken.html
Now I've been told that for your average everyday adult, it is incredibly difficult to eat that much food in a day without either throwing up a lot of it, or having severe health problems afterwords. But because of how he has built up his body, The Rock needs to eat all of this to maintain his fitness. His body goes through energy that fast. So there is definitely a relationship between muscle built and food eaten. I doubt The Rock could out eat someone from a speed eating competition, but I'm pretty sure he hasn't tried either.
So the next time you see someone going "the healthiest amount of food is three meals a day", bring up that It isn't always true.