THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 9, 1995 TAG: 9503090638
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SPECIAL NUTRITION SERIES
PART 2: TEEN DIETS
SOURCE: BY MARY FLACHSENHAAR, SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 142 lines
HE DRINKS MILK by the quart, eats cookies by the dozen, pours a bowl of cereal every hour.
Moments after a big dinner, he is in the kitchen, lighting into a sandwich the size of a small building. He is a favorite customer at the fast-food eateries, but all-you-can-eat restaurants tremble at the sight of him.
He is the typical teenage boy.
She, on the other hand, takes an algebra exam and runs the mile in P.E. - without breakfast.
After a lunch of diet cola and crackers, she's in science lab and then at an after-school meeting. By dinner, she's famished but restrains herself at the table. After all, it's only natural to diet if you're a teenage girl.
The perpetual dieter and the human vacuum - to parents, these are familiar adolescent appetites.
And there are at least as many eating styles among teens as there are flavors of Baskin-Robbins ice cream.
Consider the fast-food junkie, who pulls into a drive-through two or three times a day; the teen who acts like a toddler at the table, eating the same few foods he did as a tyke, and nothing more; the nonmeat eater, whose dietary style reflects newfound political and moral views.
The only type you'll rarely encounter is the teen who eats three squares daily, including the recommended five-a-day from the fruit and vegetable group.
According to nutritional experts who track the eating habits of American teenagers, most of them need to clean up their dietary acts.
While today's teen might ace a health-class test on the USDA Food Pyramid, he is as likely to relate the lesson to everyday life as he would a lesson on the pyramids of ancient Egypt.
That's troublesome, experts say, because adolescents need high-test fuel - and lots of it.
``The teen years are second only to infancy as the period of most rapid growth in a person's life,'' says Sheah Rarback, a pediatric nutritionist with the University of Miami School of Medicine, and a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association.
``The growth spurt might last two to four years, and during that time a girl could grow 9 inches in height, a boy 10. In that time, they could put on as much as 50 percent of their ideal body weight.''
All that growing requires lots of calories. An active boy can eat up to 3,000 calories daily, an active girl, 2,200. To facilitate bone growth, both need 1,200 milligrams, or four servings, of calcium daily.
It is especially important that girls get enough calcium in their teen years to reduce the risk of osteoporosis in later years, Rarback says. Bad food habits begun in adolescence can become an way of life by adulthood, increasing the chances of obesity, heart disease and cancer for both males and females. TOO BUSY TO EAT RIGHT
But most teens are too distracted by other things to pay much attention to the statistics and warnings.
``Today's normal teens could give a flip about the fat-clogged arteries they might get in their fifties,'' says Sue Luke, a dietitian in private practice in Charlotte, N.C. ``They're thinking about who's going to win tonight's game. They live for the moment.''
In any given moment in a teen's day, making a wise food choice has a low priority. Trying to keep up with their busy schedules and with their peers are the dominant influences in how teens eat.
Which means the Food Pyramid is often eclipsed by the Golden Arches. Like the drive-ins of yesteryear, the drive-throughs are where the teen crowd meets. And eats.
``Fast food is the biggest influence in how teens in this country eat,'' says Luke, also a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association. Years ago, when June Cleaver was putting a well-rounded dinner on the table for Ward, Wally and the Beaver, there was just MacDonald's.
``Now fast food is everywhere,'' Luke says. ``And I don't care what healthful alternatives fast-food places offer - the bad stuff always tastes better.''
Another significant factor is that moms have hung up the aprons and picked up the briefcases.
``More and more, two parents are working and nobody's home cooking,'' Luke says. ``Teens are likely to get a car earlier and be on their own at mealtime.''
And most teens are not pointing that car in the direction of a supermarket to buy ingredients for a from-scratch, low-fat meal.
Although school lunch programs provide nutritionally balanced meals, the same high-fat foods that dominate fast-food menus often are the only ones the students eat.
When she visited local high-school cafeterias a couple of years ago, Norfolk nutritionist Frances Casper was not surprised to find out where the kids put the fruit and vegetables that were served with the burgers and fries.
She observed other common behaviors. Many students ate nothing for lunch, claiming they either were dieting, too busy socializing or didn't like the food.
And while some students scoffed at lunches brought from home, Casper says some groups of girls ate lunches similar to one another's - healthful foods brought from home - almost as though they were members of a food sorority.
Casper, who works with overweight teens at Consultants in Nutritional Services, says television is as evil a nutritional villain as fast food. Not only is the TV-watching teen inactive; she's likely to be munching and sipping as she sits glued to the tube and all the food cues it delivers. At the same time, TV sends the dangerous message, via stick-skinny models and actresses, that a girl can never be too thin. NUTRITION SELLING POINTS
In addition to turning off the TV, there are ways parents can help their teens to eat better, nutritionists say.
Telling a 16-year-old boy he needs to eat wisely now to enjoy good health in his 80s is about as effective as telling him there are children in Third World countries who would love to be eating the green beans on his plate.
So Sue Luke, the Charlotte dietitian, talks this way to the high school athlete:
``You can't be the best you can be out on the field or in the classroom without high-test fuel in your tank.''
And Frances Casper uses a similar metaphor when encouraging die-hard dieters to eat breakfast:
``Your body is like an engine. It needs breakfast to jump-start it in the morning. The body misinterprets lack of food as starvation and works at slower speed for the rest of the day. Without breakfast, food eaten at lunch and later overwhelms the body and stays with it for a long time.''
Teenage girls invariably listen well when they are told about a recent study that shows that skipping breakfast can mean a weight gain of 6 to 8 pounds in a year's time, Casper says.
At least part of the following message, Casper's most oft-repeated, has high adolescent appeal:
``Teens always think I'm going to tell them that fast food is a no-no, but I don't. Fast food is fine at lunch if you use the rest of the day to eat from the food groups you missed at that meal.
``My message in a nutshell is `balance, variety and moderation.' '' ILLUSTRATION: SAM HUNDLEY/Staff
Graphic
JUNK BONDS: DIARIES TELL WHAT TEENAGERS REALLY EAT
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB