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Make fruits and vegetables a treat for your teen

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By MARY SHEDDEN mshedden@tampatrib.com

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 31, 2009

It's Halloween, the unofficial national day of candy consumption.

In just a few hours, your little darlings will be coming home with their haul of Lemonheads, Sour Skittles and Kit Kat Bars. And you will once again bemoan the junk and its power to destroy kids' appetite for anything remotely healthful.

But don't get scared off by this nutritional nightmare that comes around once a year. Get a little perspective and realize that it's the eating habits the rest of the year on which you need to focus.

"If we only had to worry about splurging once every few months, that would make such a difference," says Laurel Hudson, a culinary nutritionist with Wellspring Academy, a weight-loss boarding school and camp for overweight teens.

She suggests portioning Halloween candy into bags of two or three pieces. "Enjoying a little bit of indulgence every day is better than having a big bowl of candy sitting on the table," she says.

Hudson says the bigger hurdle is getting teens to choose healthful foods over sweets and empty calories in soda and junk food. She says she teaches teens and their families to choose healthy, low-fat, low-calorie foods without a complete deprivation of treats.

A recent state assessment of fruit and vegetable consumption suggests that many American teens face the daily food choice conflict. It found that just 10 percent of American high school students - and 14 percent of adults - say they eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables.

These results fall well short of the government's 2010 goal to get 75 percent of Americans eating two or more servings of fruit a day, and 50 percent eating three or more servings of vegetables a day.

The 100,000 high school students surveyed in 2007 were asked, essentially, how many times a day they ate fruit or vegetables. Fruit juice counted, but pieces of fruit are considered preferable because they're more filling alternatives to fatty, processed snacks, says Heidi Blanck, a scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fruits are clearly more popular: About one in three students said they ate two or more servings of fruit each day. Vegetables are a bigger struggle. Only 13 percent of U.S. high school students get at least three servings of vegetables a day. Combined, less than one out of 10 teens gets enough of both of these foods containing essential vitamins, minerals, fiber and nutrients.

The report also offers a sliver of good news. Teens in Florida ate better than most of their peers in the rest of the country, according to the survey of 38 states. Only Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont were better overall than the Sunshine State.

Hudson says that's likely because of the state's year-round availability of fresh produce in supermarkets and restaurants.
Fruits and vegetables are low-fat, low-calorie food choices. They often are cited for their role in reducing the risk of chronic diseases such as stroke, type 2 diabetes and some cancers.

The most recent national data available show that the percentage of children who are overweight and obesity is significant: 18.8 percent of children ages 2 to 5, 13.9 percent of those ages 6 to 11, and 17.4 percent of teens ages 12 to 19.

Hudson says increasing fruits and vegetables in the diet will do far more good than the bad that comes from a few sweets. Vegetables can be blended into other foods to make reaching the goal easier, she says.

"Everywhere you can get in more vegetables is a start," she says.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this story.

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