Читать книгу Yes, Please. Whatever!: How to get the best out of your teenagers - Penny Palmano - Страница 44
Оглавлениеfood and diet
Our eating culture has changed since even a generation ago. In many homes, home-cooked meals around a table with the family have been replaced by eating fast-food, takeaways and processed meals often in solitude in front of the TV, and children are all the poorer for it.
During adolescence you will notice many changes in your teenagers’ eating habits for which there are many reasons. The more understanding you have of the reasons, the easier it will be to support and benefit your growing children. Convincing your children to eat a healthy diet can feel like banging your head against a brick wall (repeatedly) but it is not, I have to add, impossible (or as painful!).
Always be a good example – it’s no good sitting down to pizza and chips on a regular basis and telling your teenagers to eat a healthy diet. If you always provide a healthy meal, regardless of how simple, they will eat it. Obviously, there will be foods they prefer to others – that is normal – but, for instance, if they dislike a piece of fish they might enjoy fishcakes.
Provide a family meal, as often as possible, that everyone will enjoy, such as a roast, steak and home cooked oven chips, or tuna salad with a baked potato. If you can’t think of simple healthy (quick) meals treat yourself to a cookbook that will provide them.
Suggest your children food shop with you one day to see if there is anything they see that they would like to try, as getting children interested in choosing food is the first step to getting them to eat healthily.
food and behaviour
Moodiness, lack of concentration, poor intellectual performance and disruptive behaviour can all be connected to a poor diet.
Recent reports have indicated that it is not only young children whose behaviour is affected by food. In 2002 The British Journal of Psychiatry published research of their findings in a controlled trial involving 230 young offenders. Half the offenders received supplements of vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids and the other half received placebos. The group on the supplement committed 40 per cent fewer violent offences than the group taking the placebo and offending was down 25 per cent. Bernard Gesch, a senior research scientist in physiology at Oxford University, points out that nutrients are vital in the biochemical processes that produce serotonin and dopamine, brain transmitters which are known to affect mood.
High sugar laden sweets, snacks and drinks can change the normal biochemical pathways, resulting in moody and disruptive behaviour. Products made from pure white flour will also convert into pure sugar with the same results.
High-fat or high-sugar meals can leave some people feeling very low after consumption. Schools that have taken out sweet vending machines and replaced them with fruit have found children more able to concentrate and less disruptive.
Growing Spurts
There will be times when you are simply amazed at the amount your children are eating. You may well wonder where can all that food possibly be going, but don’t worry, continual grazing between meals is quite normal. Although half an hour after a proper meal they claim they are ‘starving’, they probably are. And unless they are grossly overweight, don’t worry about it.
If you start to notice they are eating less it may be because their growing spurt is temporarily over and not necessarily because they are dieting (see Eating Disorders, page 198).
How to Help
Keep plenty of low-fat, low-sugar, healthy foods and snacks in the house. Healthy cereals (not the chocolate flavoured, high-salt, sugar-laden ones), brown bread, cheese, lean ham and cooked chicken, fresh fruit, nuts, yoghurt, ice-cream (check contents, it should have milk, eggs and cream – you’d be amazed at how many don’t – plus flavourings), low-fat crisps and snacks, carrots, cherry tomatoes and cucumber sticks with low fat dips such as hummus. Try and stay clear of too many processed foods.
personal appearance
Unfortunately, everywhere we look, whether it is advertising hoardings, magazines or TV and films, unrealistic body shapes are looming down on us. Obviously our children are going to emulate their idols, boys wanting ‘six-packs’ and girls wanting to be a size 8 with breast implants. It is total madness, but sadly, here to stay for the foreseeable future. Our problem is how to encourage our children to eat for their present and future health and to help them feel satisfied with their own body.
How to Help
Raising their self-esteem is the first step towards a healthy goal. Parents using the words ‘fat’ or ‘overweight’ with regard to their children could possibly trigger a fast-track decision to dieting and possibly eating disorders.
Explain to your children that everyone’s body shape develops at different times and maybe offer an example of someone they know and admire. Explain that even as adults your body shape can change, especially after having children – women with no bust before children can end up with a size D cup and visa versa. Try and make light of it and, if possible, tell them about the problems (you may have read about) their role models have had with their supposedly ‘fantastic’ figure. Girls do seem to worry more than boys, so it also doesn’t hurt to explain that most guys don’t like super slim girls, they prefer girls to have a shape.
Make sure that you compliment them on the way they look rather than criticize, and particularly praise one of their finest features, such as lovely thick hair, beautiful green eyes, good legs. If they moan about their fat waist, say things like, ‘Well who’s looking at your waist when you’ve got those fantastic legs?’ Let’s face it, none of us are perfect (far from it, in fact) but we all have some endearing feature to offset our bad bits, like short fat arms but good teeth, no neck but a great smile, fat hips but amazing long fingers. And your teenager needs to be praised and complimented on their great attributes.
Also praise and encourage other qualities apart from their physical appearance. Perhaps they are good artists, musicians, loyal friends, good listeners, great raconteurs. Building their self-esteem this way will help them to concentrate less on their appearance.
Insist the family sits around a table to eat if possible a minimum of three nights a week. Provide healthy meals.
a healthy diet
Breakfast: Exchange the sugar-laden, high-salt cereals for any of the following options. Low-salt, low-sugar or sugar-free cereals. Boiled, poached or scrambled egg and brown toast, fruit, porridge with skimmed milk or yoghurt and honey or brown sugar. Milkshakes or a ‘smoothie’ made from putting fruit and yoghurt in a blender, adding wheat-germ or bran if possible. Grilled bacon and tomatoes. Baked beans on brown toast. Brown toast and marmite, or banana or a good quality jam or marmalade.
Lunch: School lunches are a bete noir of mine. Why did the government continually harp on about children becoming obese but give the schools such an appallingly low budget per child that there is little option but to buy chips, burgers and pizzas? Finally, thanks to Jamie Oliver, it looks as though school lunches are about to improve.
Fortunately, some schools offer a healthy option, so suggest your children choose the healthy option and just have the chips or burgers once a week. Explain that hamburgers, pizza and chips are laden with fat and will make them sluggish during the afternoon.
Packed lunch: Brown bread or wholemeal pitta bread sandwiches, pasta salad, cheese, fruit, nuts, yoghurt and a bottle of water to drink.
Supper: Grilled or roasted meat, fish or chicken, egg dishes, baked potatoes, fresh vegetables, different salads, pastas, rice, pulses, cheese and yoghurt or fruit for dessert. Milk, water or juices with no added sugar.
skipping meals
How to Help
Never let children go without breakfast, it is one of the most important meals of the day. It should provide protein to kick start the brain and some good carbs to slowly release energy throughout the morning.
Teenagers will often say they are not hungry and skip a meal. If they eat regularly and you don’t think they are doing it to try and lose weight, then it’s okay, they may simply not be hungry. However, if you have just spent an hour preparing a meal for the whole family and at the last minute they decide they don’t want to eat, then agree that if they are not hungry they don’t have to eat, but you still expect them to sit at the table and join the rest of the family. Inevitably, once they are sitting with everyone else eating, if the serving dishes are on the table they may well help themselves to a little. Don’t make any comments. Just enjoy.
