FEEDING TEENS WELL In some ways I feel nutrition is the forgotten cousin of teenage health. Even though teens themselves care a lot about it. From obsessing about their thigh gaps to their acne, from the impact of nutrition on their fatigue or their brains, from tummy aches and bloating, to the problem of eating disorders, what teens eat really matters. So, no book on teenagers would be complete without a close look at your teen’s diet. The topic of teenage nutrition needs an entire book to do it justice, and this is not an encyclopaedia of food for your teenager. Instead, it’s meant to give you some practical advice about your teen’s eating, touch on the issues we see most in our practices, and discuss those that the experts we talked to get most concerned about. Most importantly, we don’t judge you. In a busy household, with working parents, not enough hours in the day and more fights with your teen than you want to poke a stick at, this is not easy. A lot of us eat far less healthily than we think we do. We imagine we eat enough vegies and fibre and that our snack consumption is low. But, if we kept a diary, we’d discover most of us could do much better. And what we eat as parents influences our children’s diets: they are watching us like hawks and their BS detectors are razor sharp. So, any change cannot be aimed at your teen alone. This needs to be a whole family approach, and you will reap the benefits as well, I promise.
Our teens aren’t eating well Not a surprise news flash . . . Only one in three people aged 12–24 years eats the recommended two to three serves of fruit per day. Boys eat less fruit than girls. When it comes to vegetables, the situation is even worse. Only one in seven people aged 12–17 years eats the 30
recommended four serves of vegetables per day, and only one in twenty people aged 18–24 years meets the guideline of five serves of vegetables per day. One in four Australian children and adolescents is technically overweight or obese, and one in 12 is obese. And, while that number is stable and not increasing, it has so many negative implications for physical and mental health that we should all still be alarmed by it. The prevalence of obesity increases with age – up to 31 per cent by age 17. And 38 per cent of Indigenous children and adolescents are obese – a number that is increasing. Does it matter? Yes. Research tells us that a good diet that starts in childhood or adolescence is likely to persist into adulthood. And the opposite is true: toddlers with a poor diet are more likely to grow into teens and adults with a dodgy diet. It is more complex than simply ‘too much bad food, not enough good food’. There are other contributing factors: lack of sleep, lack of exercise, too much time on screens . . . But, when it comes to being overweight, diet is the thing that needs to change most. Science is yet to determine the optimum amount of ‘junk food’ (in the ‘junk food’ category, I am including white bread and crackers, many commercial breakfast cereals, any drink that’s not water, milk, tea or coffee, and most ‘snacks’, even if you buy them in the health-food aisle at the local supermarket. Many contain high amounts of fat, salt and processed carbohydrates that contribute to diseases such as diabetes.) One junk food touted as a healthy option is the Subway sandwich. Given that the ‘bread’ roll contains 10 per cent sugar, in 2020 Ireland’s Supreme Court ruled that it was not allowed to be called bread! Ideally, the amount of junk food your teen consumes should sit around zero. Given that’s not going to happen, let’s just say that a daily intake of junk food is catastrophic.
