Caring for your teen’s nutrition

The kind of growth that takes place during adolescence is tremendous, second only to that during the first year of life. This causes increased nutrient demands among this age bracket.

Adolescents have typically been considered a low risk group for poor health and often receive few healthcare resources and scant attention.

However, this approach ignores the fact that many health problems later in life can be improved or avoided by adopting healthy lifestyle habits during adolescence.

For many teens, image is at the top of their list of concerns, and as a result, nutrition problems like being underweight or overweight come in because of poor eating habits.

Some end up with micronutrient deficiencies as well.

Encouraging a teenager to adopt a healthy lifestyle can be daunting, but here are some tips you can employ:

1. Provide nutritional information: Give healthy food information to your teens, right from childhood and early teen years. It will be easier to reinforce these healthy habits in your teens if education was started long before. Provide health books, nutrition magazines and promote interest in health shows.
2. Make available quick, convenient, nutrient-rich snacks: Make healthy food readily available and visible in the house. It is easier to choose the healthier food when it is clearly visible to your teen. On the contrary, avoid stocking the fridge and kitchen with unhealthy food options like pizzas, sodas, crisps, sausages etc. Stock healthier options like yoghurt, milk, pre-peeled fruits, pre-washed vegetables. If it is in the fridge, store in clear bags for ease of spotting.
3. Provide opportunities to practice making healthy choices: Involve your teens in the weekly grocery shopping and give them a chance to decide what to buy for the house. Discuss the options at hand. Let them pick an item and assess for themselves whether it is healthy or not. If not healthy, suggest a healthier option.
4. Involve your teens in meal preparation: Give them a chance to decide which fruits or vegetables or carbohydrate should be accompanied by what. This helps them achieve independence in decision making when it comes to food choices.
5. Model healthy eating habits: Children and teens are more likely to copy what you do. So, if you are teaching and encouraging healthy eating habits, do the same. That way you learn as a family and you offer each other support.