Yes, Please. Whatever!: How to get the best out of your teenagers. Penny Palmano

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       Four Support

      food and diet

      Our eating culture has changed since even a generation ago. In many homes, home-cooked meals around a table with the family have been replaced by eating fast-food, takeaways and processed meals often in solitude in front of the TV, and children are all the poorer for it.

      During adolescence you will notice many changes in your teenagers’ eating habits for which there are many reasons. The more understanding you have of the reasons, the easier it will be to support and benefit your growing children. Convincing your children to eat a healthy diet can feel like banging your head against a brick wall (repeatedly) but it is not, I have to add, impossible (or as painful!).

      Always be a good example – it’s no good sitting down to pizza and chips on a regular basis and telling your teenagers to eat a healthy diet. If you always provide a healthy meal, regardless of how simple, they will eat it. Obviously, there will be foods they prefer to others – that is normal – but, for instance, if they dislike a piece of fish they might enjoy fishcakes.

      Provide a family meal, as often as possible, that everyone will enjoy, such as a roast, steak and home cooked oven chips, or tuna salad with a baked potato. If you can’t think of simple healthy (quick) meals treat yourself to a cookbook that will provide them.

      Suggest your children food shop with you one day to see if there is anything they see that they would like to try, as getting children interested in choosing food is the first step to getting them to eat healthily.

      food and behaviour

      Moodiness, lack of concentration, poor intellectual performance and disruptive behaviour can all be connected to a poor diet.

      Recent reports have indicated that it is not only young children whose behaviour is affected by food. In 2002 The British Journal of Psychiatry published research of their findings in a controlled trial involving 230 young offenders. Half the offenders received supplements of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids and the other half received placebos. The group on the supplement committed 40 per cent fewer violent offences than the group taking the placebo and offending was down 25 per cent. Bernard Gesch, a senior research scientist in physiology at Oxford University, points out that nutrients are vital in the biochemical processes that produce serotonin and dopamine, brain transmitters which are known to affect mood.

      High sugar laden sweets, snacks and drinks can change the normal biochemical pathways, resulting in moody and disruptive behaviour. Products made from pure white flour will also convert into pure sugar with the same results.

      High-fat or high-sugar meals can leave some people feeling very low after consumption. Schools that have taken out sweet vending machines and replaced them with fruit have found children more able to concentrate and less disruptive.

       Growing Spurts

      There will be times when you are simply amazed at the amount your children are eating. You may well wonder where can all that food possibly be going, but don’t worry, continual grazing between meals is quite normal. Although half an hour after a proper meal they claim they are ‘starving’, they probably are. And unless they are grossly overweight, don’t worry about it.

      If you start to notice they are eating less it may be because their growing spurt is temporarily over and not necessarily because they are dieting (see Eating Disorders, page 198).

       How to Help

      Keep plenty of low-fat, low-sugar, healthy foods and snacks in the house. Healthy cereals (not the chocolate flavoured, high-salt, sugar-laden ones), brown bread, cheese, lean ham and cooked chicken, fresh fruit, nuts, yoghurt, ice-cream (check contents, it should have milk, eggs and cream – you’d be amazed at how many don’t – plus flavourings), low-fat crisps and snacks, carrots, cherry tomatoes and cucumber sticks with low fat dips such as hummus. Try and stay clear of too many processed foods.

      personal appearance

      Unfortunately, everywhere we look, whether it is advertising hoardings, magazines or TV and films, unrealistic body shapes are looming down on us. Obviously our children are going to emulate their idols, boys wanting ‘six-packs’ and girls wanting to be a size 8 with breast implants. It is total madness, but sadly, here to stay for the foreseeable future. СКАЧАТЬ