Top Five Reasons Teens Eat Junk Food

Top Five Reasons Why Teens Eat Junk Food and How To Counteract Them.

1) Convenience:

The food industry has determined that people will pay for convenience. They have come up with many fast dinners for families on the go. Nowadays, everybody is always running somewhere- to tennis lessons, after school programs, or any other type of activity. Instead of taking the time to cook healthy meals, we turn to processed and pre-cooked foods. The problem is that these foods are rarely as healthy as homemade meals.

We need to make healthy eating a priority that is worthy of our time. If we are able to make time for other things (such as shopping, watching TV, and talking on the phone), then we should be able to make time for preparing healthy meals.

It doesn't help that junk food is more available than any other type of food. Companies routinely sneak in ways to sell junk food. There are snack machines everywhere, even in schools! These vending machines allow us to "impulse buy"- meaning that we buy the junk food even though we weren't planning to. We see it, it looks good, we buy it, we eat it%u2026 all without thinking. That is also why there is usually junk food for sale at store check-out counters. Companies know that many of us will be bored waiting in line- and what better way to fight boredom than to eat junk? We need to resist the urge to "impulse buy". Try not to eat anything that you haven't planned to eat in advance.

2) Tastes Good

Unfortunately, junk food usually tastes better than healthy food. Many believe that if we only allow our very young children to eat healthy food, they will develop a taste for it. Children are born with a predisposition to like fattening, high calorie foods. They must be taught to like healthy foods. We need to make an effort to teach them to enjoy these foods with the same enthusiasm and persistence that we use to teach them the multiplication tables. As parents, it is our responsibility to teach our children healthy eating.

3) Advertising

The average teen sees 40,000 TV commercials a year- mostly for high calorie and high fat items. When was the last time you saw a commercial for fruit or whole grains? Companies don't advertise these healthy products as often because they are not as profitable as junk food items. Fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods are not usually name brand and cost more to produce. Companies would much rather spend their money on easy to produce, branded products (which are usually unhealthy).

Advertisements induce us to crave foods that we see. Whether it's the colorful characters or the images of the food itself, something sucks us in. Sometimes it's conscious and sometimes it's subconscious. Watching a commercial for soda can actually cause you to feel thirsty. Seeing a commercial for a type of food can plant the seed in your mind that causes you to really want to eat that food. Teens see advertisements for unhealthy foods and then go out to buy them. We need to be mindful of how commercials affect us and try not to fall prey to them. We need to explain to our children that commercials "trick" us to want certain foods. And we need to limit the number of commercials we see by cutting back on TV time- no more than 2 hours a day!

4) Costs Less

Healthy eating really can cost more. The University of Washington researchers have scientifically proven something that anyone who has been to a supermarket can attest to. After comparing the prices of 370 foods sold at supermarkets in the Seattle, they found that junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables, but junk food prices also are less likely to rise as a result of inflation. It is no wonder that obesity is highest among people from lower class groups. It is cheaper to get by on junk food than healthier foods, such as fruits and vegetables. Adam Drewnowski, director of the center for public health nutrition at the University of Washington, found that a 2,000 calorie diet would cost just $3.52 a day if it consisted of junk food, compared with $36.32 a day for a diet of healthier food. That's a big difference. It is easy to opt for junk food as a quick snack because it is so much cheaper. We need to be mindful that when it comes to our health, cheaper is not better!

5) We Don't Know Which Foods Are Most Healthy

Many people don't know which foods are healthiest. This is likely because our children grow up eating the wrong foods. We need to start teaching healthy nutrition to our children at a very young age. Following Dr. Dolgoff's Weigh: Child and Adolescent Weight Management Porgram is definitely the right start!