Tagged with 'adolescent-nutrition'

Before heading out to the grocery store, do your adolescents ask you to buy them “good snacks?” Not the healthy ones…the “good” ones. You’re not alone--- 40% of an adolescent’s daily calories come from “empty calories” eaten from added sugars and solid fats. Approximately half of these empty calories come from six sources: soda, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, grain desserts, pizza, and whole milk.

Here are some strategies for upping your teen’s nutrition game.

Don’t Force the Issue

Pestering your teen about what they should or shouldn’t eat will only make the situation worse. You don’t want it to become a power struggle, or it might backfire.

Explore Different Options

Take some time to explore a wide variety of nutritious foods you may not normally purchase, until you find some your teen actually likes. Also, take their suggestions, when possible, regarding foods to prepare at home, and consider experiment with foods outside your own culture.

If there are foods you don’t want your teens to eat, avoid bringing them into the home. Rather than candy, cookies, chips, French fries, onion rings, and sugar-sweetened beverages, keep your house stocked with nutritious foods. Oftentimes, teenagers will eat whatever is convenient.

Timing is Critical

Make sure teens have access to food frequently enough throughout the day. I recommend eating at least every 3-4 hours, and definitely don’t go more than 5 hours without food.

If your teen becomes too hungry, they’re more likely to eat anything and everything, resulting in large portion sizes. Eating large quantities of food at once leaves your teen feeling sluggish and low in energy.

Being overly hungry also increases cravings for high-sugar, high-fat types of foods. The sugar cravings are due to a drop in blood sugar levels from waiting too long to eat. The fat cravings happen because the body thinks it’s “starving,” and fat is high in calories.  

Don’t Skip Meals

Missing meals often leads to overeating at later meals because it messes up meal timing, as mentioned above. Having food available and eating regularly through the day will help control portion sizes, and keep your teen’s energy levels more stable.

Tips:

--Pack healthy snacks in your teen’s backpack.

--Keep nutrition bars in your teen’s car.

--Keep the pantry stocked with high calorie, nutritious snacks at home.

Sleep Matters!

A sleep-deprived brain may be fueling a junk food habit. Skimping on Zzz’s is a fast way to increase hunger levels and hinder our ability to make smart choices about food. Sleep deprivation actually messes with the body’s hunger and fullness hormones—leptin and ghrelin, respectively, so a person feels hungrier.

On the flipside, people who sleep more tend to eat less and have fewer cravings than those who log less time in bed. In research, participants who slept an additional 1.6 hours had a 14% decrease in overall appetite, and a 62% decrease in desire for sweet and salty foods! What a difference! The researchers attribute it all to brain chemistry because sleep deprivation actually alters your brain and you end up craving higher-calorie foods.

As a parent, what can you do to promote better sleep for your teen?

Drink Water

As a parent, try to avoid buying and keeping high-sugar drinks in the house. Fruit juice can have a lot of calories, so limit your adolescent's intake. On the other hand, whole fruit is always a better choice so keep those readily available for your teen. Your teen may also like adding fruit, veggies, or herbs to their water to change up the flavor, such as lemon, lime, cucumber, orange, mint, etc. Limit soda, sports drinks, flavored milks, and specialty coffees. 

Small changes in eating habits can help your teen feel good, look your best, and have lots of energy. It’s not about being perfect, or changing every habit right away. Small changes make a big difference.

In Health and Happiness,

Kelly Harrington, MS, RDN

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist for Healthy Goods

References:

The Insomnia Blog. The Sleep Doctor. Short on sleep, junk food looks even more tempting. 7/3/12.  

Taheri S, Lin L, Austin D, Young T, Mignot E (2004) Short Sleep Duration Is Associated with Reduced Leptin, Elevated Ghrelin, and Increased Body Mass Index. PLoS Med 1(3): e62. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0010062

No matter what your age, nutrition effects everyone. However, there is a vast difference in nutritional needs and interests depending on the population: children, adolescents, men, women, or the elderly. Children and adolescents are very influenced by their parents and opinions of peers, and adults are more likely to be influenced by their health needs. In June’s Health Buzz, I’ll cover a major nutrition topic in all the populations! Stay tuned!

In Health and Happiness,

Kelly Harrington, MS, RDN

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist for Healthy Goods

Ensuring a balanced diet with a variety of healthy foods will promote optimal growth and development for an adolescent. Eating right will reduce an adolescent’s risk of obesity, osteoporosis, iron deficiency, and dental caries (cavities). It’s also not too early to start thinking about their heart health. What adolescents eat now does effect cholesterol levels and blood pressure, and can reduce risk of developing other chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

If you’re the parent of an adolescent, here are the important nutrients and components of a diet your son or daughter may be missing:

1. Folate. This vitamin is most commonly found in many different fruits and vegetables. Most adolescents in the U.S. do not eat the recommended amount of 2½ to 6½ cups each day.

2. Magnesium. This mineral is found in bananas, spinach, black beans, lentils, nuts, seeds, and avocados.

3. Calcium. Adolescents drink more full-calorie soda per day than milk. Males aged 12–19 years drink an average of 22 ounces of full-calorie soda per day, more than twice their intake of fluid milk (10 ounces), and females drink an average of 14 ounces of full-calorie soda and only 6 ounces of fluid milk. This goes without saying, not only are adolescents not getting enough calcium, but drinking way too much sugar and high fructose corn syrup from all that soda.

4. Fresh Foods. Not enough fresh foods and too many boxed or canned, processed foods. Most adolescents eat more than the recommended maximum daily intake of sodium (1,500–2,300 mg each day).

5. Fiber. Include more whole grains, such as 100% whole wheat, quinoa, oats, and brown rice, and less white food.

6. Vitamin E is low in most adolescent's diets. It's found in leafy greens and foods with healthy fat—can those options be any further from an adolescents food preferences! No wonder they’re low in vitamin E. Some top vitamin E containing foods include almonds, swiss chard, broccoli, spinach, kale, avocado, papaya, and olives.

A couple other noteworthy items:

1. Ensure your adolescent eats a healthy breakfast because it’s associated with improved cognitive function (especially memory), reduced absenteeism, and improved mood.

2. Empty calories from added sugars and solid fats contribute to 40% of daily calories for children and adolescents aged 2–18 years, affecting the overall quality of their diets. Approximately half of these empty calories come from six sources: soda, fruit drinks, dairy desserts, grain desserts, pizza, and whole milk. 

I hope this summary give you a good idea of what to focus on when you’re grocery shopping for the family, packing your adolescent’s lunch, or making dinner.

In Health and Happiness,

Kelly Harrington, MS, RDN

Registered Dietitian Nutritionist for Healthy Goods