What do teenagers need to eat? With Jo Scott Food For Kids Podcast episode 95

Joanne Roach (00:13)

Hello and welcome to the Food for Kids podcast. I'm Joanne from the Foodies. On today's episode, we're going to be focusing on food for teenagers with dietitian, Jo Scott.

I think we all have a general idea that when our kids reach puberty and through their teens, their eating might change. We have an idea they might eat a lot more, they might be bit more bolshy about their choices, they might eat more socially, and things like their appearance and fitting in might lead to them making different food choices.

But when your eldest child slides into this stage, life is already so busy that it can be hard to take a minute and figure out what you need to do to support them. They might legally become a teenager on their 13th birthday, but unlike that Harry Enfield sketch with Kevin the teenager, there isn't a specific day where they suddenly become an adolescent and need adolescent things. So how do we know what they need as they go through this incredibly demanding time and how do we help them to find a good relationship with food for the future as they get ready to look after themselves?

Joanna Scott is a paediatric dietician with over 13 years of experience. She works in one of the largest children's hospitals in the UK and also has a busy private clinic. Although she works with lots of age groups, she posts primarily about teenage nutrition online because she feels this area can be overlooked. So I thought she'd be perfect to answer some of your questions about feeding teenagers. So let's get to the interview.

Joanne Roach (01:37)

So Jo, when kids become teenagers, it can feel like a bit of a minefield to support them with their food. What are some of the ways that the world of food can change for kids as they go through their teens? And how can this have a knock on effect for us as parents and the main providers of their food?

Joanne Scott (01:53)

Yeah, definitely. think the teens and this isn't just specific to food and diet, but becoming a teenager is all about gaining independence and finding out who you are as a person And obviously part of that is food then has a huge amount of control to it. And so our teenagers are they're gaining independence, they're doing their own thing, they're going out more. It might be really simple things like suddenly they're able to pick their own lunches at school, whereas previously in primary school you may have picked for them or they had no choice, it was just this is what the option was. Now they're going into a school canteen where they can choose what they want to have. They might be walking to and from school independently or getting public transport and therefore they're able to just pop into the corner shop or whatever they're walking past at the time to be able to pick things up.

And so as a parent, you start to lose that control. It's not just you doing the food shop at the supermarket and the child chooses it out of the cupboard. If they've got the budget to be able to buy it, they can get hold of anything. I think also teenagers become a lot more aware about what their friends are doing.

And I guess the biggest one at the moment is going to be the influence of social media that teenagers are constantly being exposed to the good, the bad, the ugly, lots of it to do with health, diet, well-being. And as a parent that becomes really difficult because you're starting to lose control. You hope you've done everything you possibly can through the toddler years, through the primary school years to kind of build up that foundation for good choices, but you can continue to encourage that through the teenage years.

So encouraging them to make kind of, I'll use the term healthy and it doesn't necessarily just mean healthy food in the sense of good for our body, but healthy for our mind as well. Are we thinking about body positivity? Are we thinking about them having a healthy relationship with food? And that's often is like kind of a psychological perspective. And I think one of the biggest things I often think about is the social media side of things. And are we able to teach our children and our teenagers to think about what's real, what's fake, what is factual? What is just someone trying to sell something because they've got a really high following and actually they're getting paid quite a lot of money to sell this product. Does it actually have evidence behind it for it to be worthwhile? Is it just going to be viral?

Joanne Roach (04:03)

So that's from a parent's perspective. But when you're seeing teenagers in clinic, what sort of questions are they bringing up themselves most often?

Joanne Scott (04:11)

D'you know, it's interesting. I think the questions from teenagers are very different to the questions that their parents I'd say typically really common things I'm to going to see are going to be around healthy weight and actually maybe controversially, I don't actually always weigh teenagers when they come into clinic. Because actually in isolation, it's not that helpful. If this is the first time I'm meeting somebody to have a one-off weight tells me absolutely nothing about that But also it then puts a lot of focus on a number.

I find with teenagers it can often put the whole consultation on the back foot because they're then panicking about what this number is and what it meant and actually all we want to do is have a bit of a chat and find out what it is that they want from the appointment. Other common things I probably see, height gain, this typically comes from boys, what sorts of things can they eat to make them tall? Again it's not really down to nutrition to an extent. Yes, under nutrition, you're going to stunt growth, but actually you can't grow taller than what you're genetically designed to be. I'm not going to be able to make you six foot tall if your parents are both five foot six, like it's just not going to happen.

Other really common ones I probably see is do I need a protein shake? obviously protein seems to be one of the hyped up nutrients at the moment so should they be using protein shakes? then often a lot of questions around kind of dietary triggers to certain symptoms so I get a lot of teenagers coming through with abdominal pain and kind of tummy aches those sorts of things and trying to unpick whether there dietary triggers that have caused it.

Joanne Roach (05:34)

As you touched on earlier, you know, we have quite a lot of control of the food when our children are little. But then as they become teenagers, They've got these huge appetites and rapidly changing bodies. So aside from obviously children who have specific medical conditions, which we won't go into here, are there nutritional things that your average teenagers need that are different from when they were primary school age?

Joanne Scott (05:57)

Yes and no, I'll go into a bit more detail. So think about the no side of things, there is nothing brand new that suddenly appears in the teenage years that they didn't need as a child and equally there's nothing that they suddenly stop needing and just completely disappears out of the diet. But yes there are changes that occur to the nutrients. So you already said about the quantity of food that they're eating, yes their calorie requirements increase massively through the teenage years to kind of adult requirements, kind of 2000 to 2500 calories, but actually some of our teenage boys, particularly if they're active, might be needing in excess of 3000 calories a day, which is really, really huge. particularly if we look at it per kilo of their body weight, that's when you see the really big numbers coming up. And I think that's maybe where people get confused, because there's a lot of requirements that are done per kilo of body weight versus the total in the day. So this is often where you hear about things like how children need like double the amount of protein or double the calories or double the iron requirements of adults. They don't physically need to eat double the amount is just per kilo of their body weight they're needing quite a lot more.

But the things that they definitely need more of so yes, they're going to need more calories and with that is going to come all the macro nutrients so the protein, the carbohydrate, the fat and this is all to do with the rapid growth that they're going through. And then we think about the vitamins and the minerals, the two biggest ones that crop up are going to be the iron and their calcium requirements. They increase hugely during the teenage years and particularly for girls with regards to the iron intake once they start their periods, their iron intake versus kind of earlier childhood really really jumps up and that can be quite difficult.

I think the other thing to think about and this isn't necessarily that they suddenly need a lot more of it compared to childhood would be fibre intake and that's purely on the basis that we know our teenagers in particular are rubbish at eating enough fibre. There a dietary survey that's done in the UK every couple of years and the results of the most recent one came out last year and I think there was a horrific statistic of something like 96 % of teenagers don't get their target fibre requirement on a daily basis. So I think that's a really good one to focus on as well, if you're concerned is their fibre intake.

Joanne Roach (08:08)

Okay, and so you've touched on there the fact that just because they need more things when they're teenagers doesn't mean they're necessarily going to eat those things. If you've got teenagers who being quite selective, which a lot of them can be because they've got that autonomy. Are multivitamins or any other supplements, the protein shakes you mentioned, are any of those helpful in any way?

Joanne Scott (08:25)

They can be, I guess it depends how selective we're talking and this is where kind of you need to think about individual assessments that you can't do a one size fits all. So yes, some people are selective, it's to what extent they are. If they're missing out entire food groups, so they're not eating any dairy products or they're not eating any fruits or any vegetables then yes potentially that are going to be missing nutrients from in their diet and so supplements may be helpful not always because often there are a single nutrient you can often get from a range of different foods so often you can get it in in other ways.

Again probably the things to think about that are more tricky for teenagers are going to be the calcium and the iron intake. If you're vegetarian or if you're vegan, particularly if the quality of your diet is poor - this isn't to say that just because you're vegetarian or vegan that you need a supplement - but actually if you're choosing to be vegetarian or vegan and you're quite selective with the foods that you're eating, these nutrients might be a little bit more tricky to get in. But it's definitely not a one size fits all.

I guess the other kind of the caveat to this would be if you've got a teenager that wasn't selective and suddenly has become very selective, I'd maybe just be doing a little bit of digging into what their reasoning for this is. So if there's somebody that's always eaten these foods and suddenly they've stopped eating them, as a parent, I'd be thinking, why is that? We're not thinking about development like your toddlers where actually it's very normal development to become a little bit fussy and just want more beige foods, bigger picture and this is almost a little bit worst case scenario but are they suddenly become very selective because they're doing it for other reasons so are they thinking about weight loss and body image and just being a little bit more aware as a parent that are they being selective for reasons that might not be so beneficial to their health.

Joanne Roach (10:10)

Okay, and if you suspect that that might be the case, how should we handle that with our kids? Especially if they talk to us about weight or their food intake?

Joanne Scott (10:17)

It's a really tricky conversation to have. I think particularly with a teenager who is potentially going to get on the defence straight away if you start to ask questions. But I think you have to have an open conversation with them and just be like, I've noticed that you're not eating this anymore. Like, do you want to talk a little bit about why you're not or… And not as a parent going in being like, you're not eating this anymore, you're losing weight, I'm really worried about you. But just kind of asking quite open questions and giving them a safe space to feel that they can talk to you what's going on. And I think if you are really concerned, then you need to seek advice from GP or another health professional that's involved, speak to school, have they noticed any concerns? Just to make sure that that person's got the right support in place if they're starting to really struggle from a mental health perspective and their relationship with food.

Joanne Roach (11:03)

Okay, but start with curiosity.

Joanne Scott (11:05)

Yeah and sometimes it is just, I saw this on Instagram, TikTok, whatever it is, I'm just trying out what it's like and it isn't going to come to anything. It might be completely harmless behaviour where they're just trying things out, but you just want to kind of check in and make sure they're okay at a time at which it feels like they're getting a little bit more distant.

Joanne Roach (11:24)

So if a parent's listening that's got a teenager and they want to make sure that they set them up with a good relationship with food to take into adult life, What would you most want the parents of your clients to know?

Joanne Scott (11:34)

Probably that food is not just nutrition and it's not just fuel. Yes, it gives us all these things, it's great, but actually we eat for so many different reasons. We eat in social situations, kind of celebrations, birthdays, parties. We eat for emotional reasons. Some people eat when they're happy, some people eat when they're sad. We have lots of cultural associations with food, we have lots of traditions and actually these factors are just as important as the nutrition side of things of food and I think it's really important to get that balance, that yes we want somebody to eat healthy in the sense that their body's getting all the nutrition that it needs but we also want them to eat healthily in the sense that they have a really good relationship with food going forward. Because it's all very well if you can get your teenager to have the absolute perfect diet where you have the balance of carbohydrate, fat, protein, vitamins, minerals, but if that means that your teenager can't then go around to their friend's house and join in with whatever's going on with regards to food or they can't go to a party, they can't go to a restaurant, actually that's not great either, that teenager is potentially going to become quite socially isolated and that's going to be really difficult for them. And I think it's finding that balance of we eat for lots of different reasons and actually all of those reasons are just as each other.

Joanne Roach (12:59)

I love that final thought from Jo that we need to remember that as social animals, we use food for a myriad of reasons in our lives and not just to nourish our bodies. So while as parents, we do want to try our best to put wholesome, nutritious foods in front of our kids as much as we can, we need to remember that choices they make around foods will have as much to do with how they feel about themselves, their friends and their world as it does with their bodies.

We can, of course, try to make sure that they have access to foods that might provide them with those slightly higher needs of things like iron and calcium while their bodies build so much extra growth. But at a time when their peers and the internet are whispering in their ear that focusing on this one nutrient or eliminating this food is some kind of miracle solution to helping them feel better about themselves, our role in helping them to keep their feet in that broader, happy and healthy relationship with food is absolutely critical. Trends will inevitably come and go, but if we can ensure that they don't feel judged about their choices, just supported to keep coming back to those good balance foundations, then those foundations will still be there when that tumultuous phase of life is through.

If this episode's made you think about how you talk to your children about food and bodies, I'll link in the show notes to episode 71 with Dr Anna Colton, where we discussed just that, and to episode 58 with Bracha Kopstick about how to children deflect or process harmful food talk around them.

But if you enjoy Jo's very calm and balanced approach today, she has lots of very helpful Instagram posts with a mixture of practical food suggestions, like foods for those extra iron and calcium needs, as well with some of those more fundamental thoughts about teenagers' relationships with their food, body image, and social expectations. So I would urge anyone with teens or pre-teens to go follow her. I'll put her details in the show notes.

I'll be back next time with another episode and I hope to see you then and in the meantime, happy eating.

00:00 Introduction

01:37 What changes with food when kids become teenagers?

04:03 What food issues do teenagers worry about?

05:34 Nutritional needs of teenagers

08:08 Teenagers and supplements

10:09 Talking to teens about food choices

11:24 What parents need to know about teen food

12:58 Summary and outro