Teens and Calorie-Rich Diet
Nowadays, a significant segment of boys and girls between 13 and 19 years age subsist on diets that were substandard. Apparently, young people had abandoned the eating routines of their families. They habitually skip breakfast and fail to make up the nutritional loss during other meals.
Perhaps in rebellion against parental control and to assert their independence,
they tend to gather with their friends at candy stores and snack shops. They
purchase items like chocolate bars and soda cans that could be held in hand
while hanging out or simply bumming around. The economic standards for
the quickie
street corner meals were based on what could be obtained with money from allowances
and after-school jobs.
The snack habit persisted through the potato chip and
carbonated beverage evening routine before a TV set. Their idea of a good
meal included a side dish of French Fries, a food lacking in almost everything
except
calories.
Calories are not all bad.
Young people burn hundreds of them daily through dancing, working, athletic competitions, and other activities. A typical male teenager may burn up to 3,600 calories a day; a teenage girl can easily handle 2,500 calories daily—and calories are easy to come by in snack foods.
For example, a chocolate milk shake at 520 calories, two doughnuts, totaling 270 calories, a chocolate candy bar at 150 calories, and a handful of potato chips at 10 calories each will easily provide half the daily energy requirements for a busy highschool girl. Adding French fries, at 15 calories each, and more cans of soda plus other snacks will bring the total up close to the 2,500-calorie level.
However, there is more to nutrition than snacking on calorie-rich foods.
An individual obviously can fill up on high-energy goodies but suffer
from malnutrition
by
disregarding the body’s normal requirements of proteins, vitamins, and
minerals. Also, calories have an insidious way of becoming excess weight.
A calorie is a unit of energy, and the human body requires a certain amount of energy each day in order to sustain life and permit the muscle activity of work and play. To maintain the proper balance between foods consumed and energy used in work and play, the teenager, like the adult, must estimate the calories in his meals and check the results regularly by stepping on a weighing scale.
People in their teens should develop the habit of weighing themselves at least
once a week, recording the weight so it can be compared with previous readings.
The weight check should occur at the same hour each time, and the same scale
should be used. Also, the same type of clothing should be worn each time the
weight is checked. If an overweight or underweight youngster can find a companion
to challenge in a race toward optimum weight, the competition will be an added
inducement.