Do You Really Want to Know What Your Teen is Eating for Breakfast?

Melissa is one of the eleventh grade students I tutor at an urban high school. When she joined me one morning last week, she was munching on barbecued chips and drinking soda. I asked her if this was her breakfast. "No," she answered." I had a sausage and egg sandwich and a Coke before coming to school."

"Do you ever eat breakfast at home?" I asked. She explained me that she didn't have the time because the bus picked her up around 7 AM. The school was near a convenience store so she and her friends would stop there before going into the school. "What do your friends eat for breakfast?" I asked. "They will buy breakfast sandwiches or doughnuts or candy bars. It depends on how much money they have," she told me.

We were studying cellular respiration but I thought it was important to delay talking about ATP formation and focus on her eating habits for a few minutes. I figured her cells would thank me for doing so. There were no surprises. She snacked frequently and showed me a Snickers bar she had in her backpack for later on. Cookies, chocolate milk, tortilla chips, soda, tacos, cheeseburgers and fries were staples. She rarely ate meals at home although she did when fried chicken, or macaroni and cheese, was being served. Vegetables were limited to the shredded lettuce and tomato sprinkled on a fast-food taco and she never ate fruit. "It's too expensive," she told me. "A banana or an apple at a convenience store costs almost a dollar and I would rather spend my money on fries at McDonalds." Were it not for the cheeseburgers and tacos with shredded cheese she ate as snack/meals, her dairy intake would have been limited to the two or three chocolate milks she drank each week. And she will always buy a can of soda, not diet soda, to drink when she is thirsty.

According to national surveys, Melissa's eating habits are typical of teen eating. Many have replaced meal eating with frequent snacking and the snacks are usually from the fried, fatty and fast-food groups. When I mentioned to Melissa that many fast-food restaurants offered salads and grilled chicken, she looked at me as if I was suggesting she eat sautéed earthworm for a snack. "It has to be fried or salty or crunchy and maybe sometimes sweet," she told me. " I don't want to spend my money on salads and chicken."

Unlike those of us in other age categories, teens do not think of their homes as a source of meals and snacks. Melissa admitted that her mom cooks meals for her father and siblings and that the refrigerator is filled with fruits and vegetables. But like her peers, Melissa would rather go out to the convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to eat than sit down with her parents and siblings for a meal.

The short and long-term consequences of a teen diet are obvious. It is hard to see how any teen can pay attention in class when the first or second or third meal of the day is a high fat, high salt, refined carbohydrate snack. The near absence of foods supplying essential nutrients to the body must take its physiological toll. Calcium deficiency probably won't show up for several more decades as osteoporosis but iron deficiency may be apparent right away. Unless the females eat reliable sources of iron (and this may be one benefit of eating fast-food hamburgers) there will no way of compensating for menstruating- associated iron loss. The chronic tiredness that hovers over most teens may not be due entirely to too little sleep. The girls may also be anemic.

It has been suggested that teens take vitamin pills because their erratic diet lacks sufficient amounts of the nutrients they should be eating daily. I suggested this to Melissa but she couldn't accept the concept of taking a pill to make sure she stayed healthy. Yet fear of obesity has a significant influence on what female teens tend to eat or rather not eat. But here again, the self-imposed dietary restrictions eliminate essential components of the diet. And one fears that if teens are told about the fattening effects of their diet, that the females and maybe some of the males may go in the opposite direction and become anorectic or bulimic.

The most successful approach to changing teen eating into something that resembles nourishment may be to appeal to their vanity and /or athletic prowess. Hair and complexion are sources of concern and teen magazines are filled with cosmetic ads that promise shiny locks and flawless skin. If the manufacturers of hair and skin products were to advertise their products with the proviso that the products will work only if a healthy diet is followed, perhaps interest in what constitutes a healthy diet will arise. Ads for products that make cheeks and lips rosy could advise the teenager consumer that their lips and cheeks will look even more naturally attractive if they are not anemic or vitamin deficient.

Competitive advantage in sports as a result of healthier eating may convert some to giving up their Doritos for carrots and their sodas for low-fat milk. One hopes that high school coaches have some influence in this area and require that their teams follow healthy diets with penalties for skipping breakfast or eating fries and a soda for lunch.

The final argument for getting the teens to go home to eat real meals is the effect of nutrients on their brain power. Teens must pass state examinations to get their diploma and the college bound have the SAT exams to get through. The teachers spend hours preparing their charges for the state exams and many students pay to attend after-school classes to prepare for the SATs. Yet no time is spent in telling the kids how to eat so that they will learn better in the classroom and do better on their tests. I suspect that many who want to do well on these exams so they can graduate and for some, go to college, might be willing to eat so as to maintain their brain power. And that might be the most persuasive argument of them all.

Judith Wurtman is the author of "The Serotonin Power Diet".