Healthy Eating Habits For Adolescents

How often should my child eat?

A toddler should have two main meals and a few snacks throughout the day. They should maybe eat a good breakfast, a nice big lunch, have a snack instead of dinner and have a couple of snacks in-between those meals. As they get older, kids will generally need to eat every three to four hours, whether it's a meal or a snack.

How much fruit should my child eat?

Our children need different amounts of fruit as they get older. A toddler basically will need one cup of fruit, which is about the size of a fist. An older child, elementary school age, will need closer to two cups of fruit a day, so two fists. When we get into adolescence, our kids are going to need two to three cups of fruit.

What are my child's special diet needs during puberty?

In terms of a child's special diet needs during puberty, females will require additional iron. Iron, basically, is found in our blood, and when we're going through puberty, our girls are starting their menses. They're starting to have that monthly blood loss. So, we need to replenish that iron. Foods that have iron are meats, chicken, and fish. There's also iron in plant foods. Those foods are spinach, broccoli, and oatmeal. What you want to do with those plant food sources of iron is also eat a vitamin-C-rich food with it. If you have spinach, put some tomatoes with it and cook it all up; maybe even cook it in an iron skillet, and the tomato acid will actually draw the iron out of your iron skillet. For boys, what you want to do is make sure they're getting enough calcium. That's because their bones may be growing rapidly, and calcium is what gives our bones its strength. It's that inner networking that's in our bones. If we don't eat calcium, it's hard to get it anywhere else. If our body needs the calcium, it will pull it from our bones.

What are common mistakes parents make when feeding children?

What parents want to be careful of is allowing the child to become more responsible for food than the parent. Parents make the mistake of allowing the child to decide what foods they're going to eat and when they're going to eat, and allowing the child to basically control the food happenings of that households. Parents definitely need to keep responsibility. They need to be the ones to show their children how to eat healthily. Parents need to be the ones who are buying and preparing healthy foods and instructing their children to eat at appropriate times - setting up schedules for them. The other concern I have when it comes to feeding our children and making sure they're healthy is the type of foods that we're choosing. Parents choose fewer and fewer fresh foods and instead select fast and convenience foods. My word of caution to parents is if you need to go to that resource, use it, but figure out a way that you can add something to the food to make it a little more nutritious for your children.

What is "normal eating" for my child?

Normal eating for your kids is paying attention to their bodies. It's not making food "good" or "bad", it's learning to enjoy our food and to enjoy it in moderation, and to trust our body. One day, we're going to overeat, and so therefore the next day, we're going to maybe have a smaller breakfast and lunch, as a normal eating pattern. Or we know we're going to go out to dinner and we're going to eat a lot, so again, that breakfast and lunch beforehand, we try to cut back a little bit.