8.4: Eating during Adolescence and Health Eating

The Dietary Guidelines define late adolescence, as the period from ages fourteen to eighteen. After puberty, the rate of physical growth slows down. Girls stop growing taller around age sixteen, while boys continue to grow taller until ages eighteen to twenty. One of the psychological and emotional changes that take place during this life stage includes the desire for independence as adolescents develop individual identities apart from their families. As teenagers make more of their dietary decisions, parents, caregivers, and authority figures should guide them toward appropriate, nutritious choices.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Adolescent food choices may not be healthy.[1]

Some adolescents don’t have all the food necessary for proper development and may be food insecure. Most people have access to fresh water in all except the most extreme situations; the need for food is the most fundamental and important human need. More than 1 in 10 U.S. households contain people who live without enough nourishing food and this lack of proper nourishment has profound effects on their abilities to lead lives that will allow them to develop to their fullest potential. (Hunger Notes, n.d.).

When people are extremely hungry, their motivation to attain food completely changes their behavior. Hungry people become listless and apathetic to save energy and then become completely obsessed with food. Ancel Keys and his colleagues (Keys, Brožek, Henschel, Mickelsen, & Taylor, 1950) found that volunteers who were placed on severely reduced-calorie diets lost all interest in sex and social activities, becoming preoccupied with food. According to Maslow, meeting one’s basic needs is vital for proper growth and development. [2]

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow’s theory is based on a simple premise: human beings have needs that are hierarchically ranked. There are some needs that are basic to all human beings, and in their absence, nothing else matters. We are ruled by these needs until they are satisfied. After we satisfy our basic needs, they no longer serve as motivators and we can begin to satisfy higher-order needs.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs showing that only when basic physiological needs like hunger and thirst are met does one worry about safety needs. After those are met, one begins to worry about love and belongingness and only then about esteem. Only a few people worry reach the highest point of the hierarchy and become self actualizing – realizing their full potential.[3]

Maslow organized human needs into a pyramid that includes (from lowest-level to highest-level) physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization needs. According to Maslow, one must satisfy lower-level needs before addressing needs that occur higher in the pyramid. For example, if someone is starving, it is quite unlikely that he will spend a lot of time, or any time at all, wondering whether other people think he is a good person. Instead, all of his energies are geared toward finding something to eat.[4]

Weight Management

Forming good eating habits and engaging in fitness or exercise programs will help maintain a healthy weight and develop lifelong habits. Research says that the best way to control weight is: eat less (consume fewer calories) and exercise (burn more calories). To maintain a healthy weight, restricting your diet alone is difficult and can be substantially improved when it is accompanied by increased physical activity.

The energy (calorie) requirements for preteens differ according to gender, growth, and activity level. For ages nine to thirteen, girls should consume about 1,400 to 2,200 calories per day and boys should consume 1,600 to 2,600 calories per day. Physically active preteens who regularly participate in sports or exercise need to eat a greater number of calories to account for increased energy expenditures.[5]

People who exercise regularly, and in particular those who combine exercise with dieting, are less likely to be obese (Borer, 2008).Borer, K. T. (2008). Exercise not only improves our waistline, but also improves our overall mental health by lowering stress and improving feelings of well-being. Exercise also increases cardiovascular capacity, lowers blood pressure, and helps improve diabetes, joint flexibility, and muscle strength (American Heart Association, 1998).

For long lasting change, it’s important to plan healthy meals, limit snacking, and to schedule exercise into our daily lives.[6]

Attributions:

Child Growth and Development by Jennifer Paris, Antoinette Ricardo, and Dawn Rymond, 2019, is licensed under CC BY 4.0

[1] Image by Garry Knight is licensed under CC BY 2.0

[2] Nutrition through the Life Cycle: From Pregnancy to the Toddler Years by Maureen Zimmerman and Beth Snow is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (modified by Dawn Rymond)

[3] Image by J. Finkelstein is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

[4] Education, Society, & the K-12 Learner by Lumen Learning references Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs by Boundless, which is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

[5] Beginning Psychology - Two Fundamental Human Motivations: Eating and Mating by Charles Stangor is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

[6] Beginning Psychology - Two Fundamental Human Motivations: Eating and Mating by Charles Stangor is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (modified by Dawn Rymond)