What To Do For Healthy Diet
- Changing Food Habits
- Teenagers are often very busy with school, work, and sports schedules. Help your teenager plan his day if he will not be home for meals. Send healthy snacks or packed lunches with him. This will help him avoid filling up on "junk" food or high fat foods. They may need extra snacks to take with them or meals they can prepare quickly.
- Teenager learns from healthy eating habits. Teach by example and praise his good food choices whenever you can. Try not to be critical of his appearance at this time of life. Teenagers can easily become too worried about their body image. If they are eating too much or too little, it can effect their growth. Talk with your caregiver if you are worried about your teenager's eating habits.
- Food Group Choices
- Give your teenager at least one serving per day of a high vitamin C food. Examples are citrus fruits and juices, tomatoes, potatoes, and green peppers. Your teenager also needs one serving per day of a high vitamin A food. This includes spinach, winter squash, carrots, or sweet potatoes.
- Choose lean meats, fish, and poultry foods for your teenager. Also, give your teenager 2% milk and lowfat dairy foods after age 2 to limit saturated fat intake. Avoid fried foods and high fat desserts except on special occasions. This will lower his risk for heart disease when he is older.
- The sample 3000 calorie menu below will help you plan meals and snacks. If your teenager needs more calories, add more foods from each food group every day.
Skipping meals won't help you lose weight and is not good for your child, because you can miss out on important nutrients. Having breakfast will help you get some of the vitamins and minerals you need for good health.
Aim to drink six to eight glasses of fluids a day – water and lower-fat milk are all healthy choices.
Even unsweetened fruit juice is sugary. Your combined total of drinks from fruit juice, vegetable juice and smoothies should not be more than 150ml a day – which is a small glass.
What To Eat For Healthy Diet
You should eat a healthy balanced diet that matches your energy needs. This means lots of fruit, vegetables and starchy food and moderate amounts of foods rich in protein, milk and dairy foods.
It is important that you eat the types of food listed below:
- Milk, cheese, yoghurt, soya beans, tofu and nuts – these are good sources of calcium, which is needed for healthy bones and teeth
- Breakfast cereals and margarine that have vitamins added, and oily fish - these are good sources of vitamin D, which helps keep a good supply of calcium in the blood
- Meat (particularly red meat), fish, pulses, green vegetables and cereals with added vitamins – these are rich sources of iron, which is needed for healthy blood
- Foods containing folate - the natural form of folic acid - such as green vegetables, brown rice and fortified bread and breakfast cereals
- Citrus fruit (such as oranges and lemons), tomatoes and potatoes – these are all good sources of vitamin C, which is essential for health and may help the body absorb iron, so it's a good idea to have fruit juice with an iron-rich meal
What To Avoid
Avoid eating shark, swordfish and marlin because these contain relatively high levels of mercury which, until the age of 16, might affect a young person's developing nervous system.
Foods high in fat, particularly saturated fat, sugar or salt, should only be eaten in small amounts or not very often.
From the age of 11, everyone should try to eat no more than 6g salt a day.