Eating, diet and weight: Teen attitudes

What's New, Jan/Feb 1999 by Berg, Frances M

TEENAGERS IN AMERICA, especially teen girls, are afraid to eat, afraid to grow, afraid to gain weight. It's a fear that consumes them, shatters lives, even kills. By age 10, as many as 81 percent of girls are eating in dysfunctional, disturbed ways.

From television, magazines and their friends, teen girls learn that appearance is all important. The female ideal weight as depicted by the media has been cut by onethird in recent years. Today's gaunt models come in size 1 or 2, and most girls cannot be this thin in a healthy way. Boys learn to demand thinness of women, to revere their own muscles and scorn fat.

As a result, teen girls have the poorest nutrition of any group in the U.S. At the median, the calcium intake of girls, age 12-15, is less than 63 percent and iron intake less than 67% of the recommended intake. Eating disorders are the most severe form of dysfunctional eating. An estimated 10 percent of high school and college students, most of them female, suffer from clinical eating disorders.

How can Family and Consumer Sciences teachers help? Eating disorder expert Michael Levine, Ph.D., suggests specific ways that teachers can help young people explore the eating disorder trap:

Discuss the ways in which students' beliefs, attitudes and behaviors about their bodies and the bodies of others have been shaped by the forces of weightism and sexism.

Discuss the dangers of trying to alter one's body shape through dieting, the value of moderate exercising and the importance of eating a variety of foods.

Ask students how they can make a commitment to physical activity for the joy of feeling their bodies move, not just to purge fat from their bodies or compensate for calories eaten. Have students develop an activity program that focuses on fun, not weight loss.

Ask students to bring in sample magazine ads and discuss what they think about the way the models look. Ask them to compare the models to the body shapes around them: friends, siblings, parents, teachers. What features are similar? What are different? Discuss ways that television, magazines and other media distort the true diversity of human body types.

Help students to learn to eat healthy by eating when they are hungry and by stopping eating when they are full. Let them know all foods can be part of healthy eating. Experiment with quick, healthy snack recipes.

Have students create a lesson plan that explores the topic of eating disorders. Use the Internet to find web sites that provide eating disorder statistics, resources and tips such as http://members.aol.com/edapinc/home.html and www.healthy weight.net. Post these lesson plans on the school's web site.

Developing a strong self-esteem, the core of all Family and Consumer Sciences, is the key to avoiding unhealthy behavior that can result in eating disorders. Education and communication can help address the issue of eating disorders, and help young people face these challenges thoughtfully, with control.

Frances M. Berg, M.S., is the authoren and Teens in Weight Crisis" and Afraid to Eat: Children and Teens Women in Weight Crisis" and "Afraid to Eat: Women in Weight Network) www.healthy Weight Network) www.healthyweight. net