Teen Nutrition: How to Help Them Make Healthy Choices
12:19 PMAdolescence seems to be synonymous with erratic eating habits as the typical teenager's life fills up with friends, sports and homework. Yet, adolescence is also a time of rapid growth and development that makes healthy eating habits even more important. Therefore, it is critically important that teenagers are encouraged to make nutritious food choices.
What can you do to improve the health of your teenager?
Teens have the freedom to make their own choices, and are eating out more, visiting fast food restaurants more often, and getting their lunches from school vending machines.
Expecting teenagers to bring a brown bag lunch to school when their friends are eating at fast food restaurants, or to snack only on carrot sticks when everyone else is eating chips, probably is not realistic.
With teenagers, it works best to teach them how to make better choices (even if they are not perfect choices) whether they are eating at home, school or in restaurants. Improving eating habits among teens is crucially important for two reasons (among others): building strong bones and preventing obesity.
- The foundation for a lifetime of strong bones is built during the teen and young adult years until about age 30. This represents their peak bone mass - the strongest their bones will ever be. Yet, research indicates that teenagers are not getting nearly enough calcium to build strong bones and that can lead to osteoporosis later in life.
- Maintaining normal weight is critically important since obesity often leads to diabetes-type 2, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, conditions once seen most commonly in adults. For adults as well as children, the best way to treat and prevent these problems is a combination of healthy diet and exercise. In addition, positive eating patterns fostered during the teen years are very likely to last a lifetime.
Tips for parents
- Teach teenagers that eating "healthier" does not mean giving up their favorite foods altogether. For many teenagers, it means cutting down on portion size and adding foods with nutritional value to their diet - having a smaller bag of chips along with an apple or switching from higher fat chips to pretzels, for example.
- Acknowledge that teenagers will eat fast foods, yet encourage buying the smallest portion sizes available or sharing a super-sized meal with a friend. Also, encourage teenagers to make beverage choices that are nutritious, such as milk, rather than always selecting sodas.
- Model good behavior - eat well, exhibit a healthy attitude toward food, display a good body image and lead an active lifestyle yourself!
- Encourage nutrition label reading. Emphasize key teen nutrients that may be in short supply - such as calcium and iron. Starting the day with a bowl of cereal with milk is a great way for teens to get more calcium.
- Remind teenagers to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Skipping meals does not help with weight loss and it might keep them from getting all the nutrients they need.
- Encourage teenagers to choose an activity they enjoy and to exercise for at least 30 minutes to 60 minutes most days of the week.
At times, it may be hard to believe that teenagers will grow up into individuals who will make good decisions about their nutrition and activity choices; however, your nutrition education efforts will go a long way toward helping them to do just that.
Excerpts taken from "Teen Nutrition: Helping Teens Make Healthy Food Choices" at Meals Matter. Read more: http://www.mealsmatter.org/articles-and-resources/healthy-living-articles/Teen-nutrition.aspx
Best Teen Diets recommends a well balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat or fat-free dairy. We offer nutrition information for parents, teens and teachers that emphasizes the importance of healthy eating for teens. Visit our website (which is being revamped with more content) www.bestteendiets.org
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