Mothers of School-Age Children
Active Living
What about nutrition for my growing adolescent?
Nutrition and the growth of your teen are closely linked, since healthy eating plays a role in helping them achieve peak growth and development. Although not much research has been done on teens’ eating habits, we do see that their energy balance has been upset by higher rates of youth being overweight (and perhaps even obese). We also know daily physical activity is on the decline, mostly in females.
During the teen years, a person’s food habits and eating patterns tend to become well set. A national survey that asked teens their opinion shows that their eating patterns have changed slightly over the last decade. They are eating more foods with low nutrition (such as potato chips, french fries, hamburgers/hotdogs/sausages, soft drinks, candy and chocolate bars) and fewer foods with high nutrition (fruits and vegetables, whole wheat breads, low fat milk products).
-
A current small-scale study shows that junk food with a lot of sugar makes up as much as one-third of the calories consumed by teen boys. These boys meet their energy and nutrient needs based on eating large amounts of food (volume) rather than making high quality food choices. Sugar-rich foods with little nutritional value can account for about 1,000 calories per day in a teen boy's diet. This adds up to one-third of total energy intake.ii
Nutrition education for these young men needs to focus on nutrient density and quality food choices from within the four food groups of Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide. The goal of eating well is to build muscle strength, power, and energy to maintain their active lifestyles.
-
Adolescent girls, on the other hand, choose higher quality foods but do not eat enough of them. They mainly lack enough milk products and other calcium-rich foods. This eating pattern, coupled with low levels of physical activity common in teen girls, could increase their risk of osteoporosis, anemia (low count of red blood cells), obesity, and heart disease. The concerns that teenage girls have about food focus mostly on body weight and body image. Their food choices reflect those concerns and they may divide foods in two groups: fattening and non-fattening.
Nutrition education for adolescent girls needs to help young women feel comfortable with all body shapes and sizes, and encourage physical activity as a way to feel good about oneself. A focus on foods for vitality, energy, and "girl" power may help to reinforce positive choices that girls make about lifestyle, food, and activity. The teen years are a key time to encourage young women to adopt such choices and to act on them. This may make it easier for them to maintain such choices as adults.
ii Gray-Donald K, Jacobs-Starkey L, Johnson-Down L. , Can J Public Health. 2000 Sep-Oct; 91(5):381-5. Food habits of Canadians: reduction in fat intake over a generation.