Proper nutrition for teens concerns grandparents
Recently, Shirley Barr (and fellow grandmother) took her 12-year-old granddaughter and her next-door neighbor (also 12) to lunch at a local restaurant.
As my friend told me, “The girls, both club athletes, spent a lot of time discussing the menu choices in terms of calories.” Shirley was concerned. “Where in the world did they get the idea they needed to watch calories? Both their mothers are fairly trim and definitely not fanatical about their weights, so where was this calorie-consciousness of these two pre-teens coming from?” she said.
I consulted Charlotte Kikel, nutritionist/dietitian and owner of Eat in Peace Wellness Consulting.
“A lot of this is cultural, so these girls may be taking cues from the older girls in their volleyball club,” said Kikel, whose study of nutrition began 12 years ago when her asthma and the prescribed treatment began impacting her ability to feel well. “We also live in a society when you’re often considered a better person if you eat less ... it is a sense of nobility, but we’ve also been conditioned by everything around us, especially in our formative years.”
Bottom line, Kikel — whose father was an officer for Imperial Sugar in Sugar Land — said my friend’s pre-teen granddaughter, like many weight-conscious youngsters, are operating under the mis- information that calories matter, and peer pressure is huge.
“Just look at the ads, the movies. It’s that same old mantra,” she said. “You can never be too thin, too blonde and too rich. Kids are being bombarded with this same message, and counting calories is part of the trickle-down effect.
“Instead, it’s the type of food that matters,” the nutritionist said. “Is it real food you’re eating? Many people don’t realize our brains need a certain amount of fats to function, for example. But caloriecounting is the last thing 12-year-olds need to be doing.”
As a gentle intervention, Kikel suggested a family-style discussion about health, wellness, food and how a balanced menu of food intake is the most important.
“A growing body needs good food as well as calories. A young person’s development will be impacted by counting calories,” she said, “and because we are still learning about foods, it is not reasonable to focus on this one component (calories).”
As she pointed out, “Science is everchanging. Food and our relationship with food also is evolving.”
During her training in Baltimore, Maryland, for example, Kikel saId she became aware of how socioeconomic factors play into an individual food choices.
“We’ve all heard of food deserts, and I saw many neighborhoods, particularly in poorer sectors of Baltimore, where the food affordable and easily available wasn’t the best from the nutritional standpoint.
“In some cultures, too, bodies are not set up for the food available, and this results in problems like diabetes, alcohol addiction, etc.,” she said. “But you have to start where you start — and you can always make positive changes.”
She said she believes the answer to making the best food choices and making positive lifestyle changes lies in education ... and often these new choices and changes come after a crisis.
“When someone, as an example, is diagnosed with a disease like diabetes, they begin paying attention to their food choices and are educated as to how they can control their diabetes through what they eat and the importance of exercise.”
But education must be inspired education.
“We as a society are often influenced by advertising from various special interest groups,” Kikel said. “However, we should have conversations, especially with young people, about nutrition, body image and what is attractive. We’re so much more than our bodies.”
A recently released nationwide report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found slightly more than one in three Texas kids — ages 10 to 17 — were measured as overweight or obese last year — a rate higher than the national average, but slightly improved from five years ago.
Out of all 50 states, Texas youth ranked 15th worst in the nation with 33.3 percent of its youth overweight or obese. The national rate is 31.2 percent.
The report also found one in four young adults who tried to join the military were deemed ineligible due to fitness and weight concerns.
“Obesity rates are still far too high, but the progress we’ve seen in recent years is real, and it’s encouraging,” Richard Besserm, president and CEO of the foundation, said in a statement.
He said, however, that progress “could be easily undermined if leaders and policymakers at all levels don’t continue to prioritize efforts that help all Americans lead healthier lives.”
In Texas the problem goes well beyond just its young people. Findings published last month in the foundation’s annual State of Obesity showed that 33.7 percent of Texas adults were overweight or obese, which was the eighth highest rate in the U.S. for adults.
“Learning to trust your body and what it needs — and using food (more protein, fewer carbs and adequate fat) as lifegiving substances — is the best route,” said Kikel, who publishes a monthly newsletter and will release her new book in January, Eat in Peace to Live in Peace: Your Handbook for Vitality.
“Our bodies talk to us all the time,” she said. “My goal is to empower people to enjoy life as they walk through this world. We need to embrace the fact there’s no guilt in the so-called ‘guilty pleasure’ of cheesecake.”