Healthy Eating Recipes for Teenagers

Cover more than 12 kinds of food every day and eat enough 25 kinds a week. The intake ratio of cereals, potatoes, meat, eggs, milk beans, fruits and vegetables is about 4:3:2:1, and reserve about 10% of the "happy eating quota" - you don't have to completely quit what everyone considers "junk food" such as milk tea and fried skewers, but it can prevent children from secretly eating indiscriminately.

In the past two years, I helped the U14 men's basketball team of the city's sports school make dietary adjustments. At first, the menu was based on textbook standards, including whole grains and lean red meat, and they were required to drink 500ml of pure milk every day. Within two weeks, a coach reported to me that the children secretly hid instant noodles and spicy strips in the dormitory, and after training, they went to the school gate to buy fried skewers. Later, I relaxed the rules and allowed them to choose two "Happy Meals" per week. Whole grains did not need to account for more than half, just mixed with polished rice and white flour. After three months of testing, everyone's body fat rate did not increase, the average height increased by 1.2 cm, and all hemoglobin indicators met the standard.

In fact, many parents nowadays are entangled in the diet of teenagers, mostly because they are led astray by various extreme views. Let’s take the question of whether to eat all whole grains for breakfast. One group of nutritionists insists that polished rice and white flour raise blood sugar quickly and make you feel sleepy if you eat them in the morning. All cereals must be replaced with whole grains such as oats, quinoa, and brown rice. ； Another school of thought believes that teenagers have a poor appetite when they get up early. Whole grains make them full and difficult to chew, and eating them hard will lead to insufficient energy supply throughout the morning. Among the hundreds of cases I have come across, the most suitable solution is to "mix half and half": instead of chewing hard to swallow pure oatmeal, just mix one-third of the oats into white rice to make multigrain porridge. For children who don't like to drink milk, switching to unsweetened soy milk or low-sugar yogurt is enough to replenish protein, and there is no need to force the child to vomit. A mother who was in the third grade of junior high school told me that she used to force her son to eat half a corn and a bowl of pure quinoa rice every morning. His son would cry every time he ate it. Later, he changed it to two vegetable bags with a cup of soy milk and five small tomatoes. During the midterm exam, the child never said that he was so hungry that he had stomachaches in the fourth period, and his mock test score jumped by more than ten places.

As for the issue of heavy oil and salt in school cafeterias, there is no need to worry too much. Nowadays, many schools do not allow you to bring food for fear of food safety issues. If the food is too oily, you can just scoop up a bowl of free hot soup and simmer it for ten seconds. There is no need to buy so-called "light salad" outside the school - the sauce in most salads has more calories than rinsed braised pork. Speaking of braised pork, academic circles now have different opinions on the red meat intake of teenagers: some guidelines require that they must eat enough 50g of lean red meat every day to ensure the intake of iron and zinc to avoid anemia. ； Some studies believe that white meat has lower fat content and is more suitable for avoiding obesity in adolescence. In fact, there is no need to stick to the indicator. I ate braised pork in the cafeteria today at noon, and when I got home in the evening, I ate more steamed sea bass and shrimps and eggs. Just adjust flexibly. It is better than not allowing fat meat at all and having your children go to the canteen after school to buy three sausages.

There is also the issue of "junk food" that is the biggest headache for parents. I have always said that reserving 10% is really not empty talk. I once met a kid who was in the first grade of junior high school. His parents were very strict. He couldn't even see candy in the house, let alone fried skewers with milk tea. As a result, the kid saved up half a month's pocket money, hid at a classmate's house on the weekend and ate three packets of potato chips and two bottles of iced Coke. He ended up going to the hospital with acute gastroenteritis, which was not worth the gain. There is currently no uniform standard for adolescents’ intake of added sugar in the academic community: WHO’s recommendation is no more than 25g per day, which is about 6 tablespoons of sugar. Recent studies have also shown that as long as the total calories do not exceed the standard and exercise is adequate, a slight excess of added sugar will not have an irreversible impact on growth and development. My general advice to parents is that if you want to drink milk tea, just choose three-point sugar. Don’t force yourself to drink sugar-free. After all, if you really can’t drink it, you will secretly buy a sweeter fruity soda.

If you really don’t know how to match them, I’ll write down a few commonly used combinations. You can make them up at will, without having to follow any strict rules from Monday to Sunday:

If you want to study early in the morning, two vegetable bags with 250ml of sugar-free soy milk and a handful of cherry tomatoes are enough. If you get up early, you can add ten minutes more and fry an egg on whole wheat toast with 250ml of pure milk and a handful of original nuts. You will not be hungry all morning.；

For lunch at school, just one fistful of rice (any grains and white rice will do), one palmful of meat (all pigs, beef, mutton, fish, shrimp, and chicken), two fists of green leafy vegetables, and a light soup will be just fine.；

You don’t need to eat too much in the evening. A stick of corn or a sweet potato is the staple food, with a portion of scrambled eggs or stewed tofu, plus a portion of cold salad. Drink a small box of about 100g of yogurt after the meal, and you won’t be so stuffed that you can’t sleep.

Set aside an allowance for one or two meals a week. If you want to eat burgers, fried chicken, or pizza, just pair it with a cup of unsweetened lemon water to relieve greasiness without feeling guilty.

To be honest, the diet of adolescents is essentially laying the foundation for lifelong eating habits, and there is no need to make it an ascetic-like KPI assessment. The more you mark a certain food as a "no-touch" forbidden area, the stronger the child's desire for it will be, and the more relaxed it will be. As long as it meets the nutritional principles most of the time and occasionally eats what you like, the body will be healthier - after all, happiness is also an important factor affecting growth and development, right?