Unless blood tests and a pediatrician's evaluation reveal a specific deficiency, it's preferable to obtain nutrients from food instead of from dietary supplements. Adolescents tend to most often fall short of their daily quotas of calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamin D. Vitamins and MineralsĪ well-rounded diet based on the USDA guidelines should deliver sufficient amounts of all the essential vitamins and minerals. And almost all packaged goods that contain fat are likely to have partially hydrogenated fat, because it has a longer shelf life. You may be surprised to see how much fat, sugar, and salt (sodium), is in the foods you eat every day. If your family eats a lot of packaged and processed foods: Make a habit of reading the food labels. The other 20% of daily calories from dietary fat should come equally from the two unsaturated kinds of fat, both of which are contained mainly in plant oils. You want to limit your family's intake of saturated fat to no more than 10% of your total daily calories. Saturated fat -is the most cholesterol laden of the three found in meat and dairy products like beef, pork, lamb, butter, cheese, cream, egg yolks, coconut oil, and palm oil.Polyunsaturated fat -found in corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, and sesame-seed oil.Monounsaturated fat -the healthiest kind found in olives and olive oil peanuts, peanut oil and peanut butter cashews walnuts and walnut oil, and canola oil.Although these life-threatening events usually don't strike until later in adult life, the time to start practicing prevention is now, by reducing the amount of fat in your family's diet.ĭietary fat contains varying proportions of three types: The danger of atherosclerosis is that the blockage will affect one of the blood vessels leading to the heart or the brain, setting off a heart attack or a stroke. It would take a workout befitting an Olympic athlete to burn off excess fat calories day after day.įatty foods contain cholesterol, a waxy substance that can clog an artery and eventually cause it to harden. A teenager who indulges in a fat-heavy diet is going to put on weight, even if he's active. But these benefits must be considered next to its many adverse effects on health. Fat supplies energy and assists the body in absorbing the fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K.
Simple carbs, on the other hand, seduce us with their sweet taste and a brief burst of energy but have little else to offer and should be minimized in the diet.įat should make up no more than 30% of the diet.Most nutritionists recommend that complex carbohydrates make up 50% to 60% of a teenager's caloric intake.
They are truly foods of substance: filling yet low in fat.
As a bonus, many starches deliver fiber and assorted nutrients too. Complex carbs provide sustained energy that's why you often see marathon runners and other athletes downing big bowls of pasta before competing. In planning meals, we want to push complex-carbohydrate foods and go easy on simple carbohydrates. Not all carbs are created equal, however. The densest sources of protein include teenage favorites such as:Ĭarbohydrates, found in starches and sugars, get converted into the body's main fuel: the simple sugar glucose. Not because it isn't important-50% of our body weight is made up of protein-but because adolescents in the United States get twice as much protein as they need. Of the three nutrients, we're least concerned about protein. Fat contributes more than twice as much: 9 calories per gram.Each gram of protein and carbohydrate supplies 4 calories, or units of energy.The nutrients protein, carbohydrates, and fats in food serve as the body's energy sources.
During middle and late adolescence, girls eat roughly 25% fewer calories per day than boys do consequently, they are more likely to be deficient in vitamins and minerals. Kids who are big and tall or who participate in physical activity will still need increased amounts of energy into late adolescence. Typically, the ravenous hunger starts to wane once a child has stopped growing, though not always.
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