by Grenada Food and Nutrition Council
Sometimes, a teenager’s mood swings, irritability, or lack of focus may not be due to stress or mental health challenges but rather to poor nutrition.
The Grenada Food and Nutrition Council (GFNC) encourages parents of teenagers to provide healthier options as they continue to grow and to pick healthy foods on their own.
The part of the brain responsible for decision-making is called the prefrontal cortex. The entire development of this part of the brain occurs between the ages of 18 and 25. This area is crucial for decision-making, emotional regulation, organisation, attention, and focus, among other functions. Research from numerous resources suggests that mood swings, irritability, low or hyper energy, poor academic performance, sleep difficulties, or frequent illness may be directly related to poor nutrition rather than a mental disorder.
For these reasons, GFNC, leading global nutrition researchers, and their agencies assert that poor nutrition impacts healthy brain development. Therefore, what your teen eats matters. Frequent consumption of excess sugar, saturated fats, fried foods, and salty foods not only leads to high blood pressure, obesity, and Type 2 diabetes but also impairs teenagers’ brain development process.
Poor nutritional preferences occur because of food availability but also due to their appealing taste. Nonetheless, if not curbed early, those choices can continue into adulthood, leading to costly health problems later in life. Hence, GFNC encourages parents and guardians to choose balanced meals with fruits, veggies, and lean proteins and encourages their teens to make smart food choices.
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Encouraging a better diet in Grenada is absolutely essential.
Foods that were historically eaten, back when most people worked hard and walked distances to school or work are not applicable to todays lifestyles where cars and buses and often sedentary behaviours, gawping at phones, TV’s and PC screens have caused many people to become grossly overweight. Where they run the risk of diabetes, stroke and heart attacks.
Unfortunately most dietary advice at the moment is derived from food agencies in America that was initiated by Seventh Day Adventists back at the end of the 19th Century. Originally intended to curb licentious behaviour. Bizarre but true.
Regrettably combining that with Big Agriculture and Government intervention we have been taught to make Cereals a large part of our diet. Combine that with the growth of seed oils and margerines on the shelves which only really happened after Ivan when the much healthier Coconut oil was in short supply, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Teenagers need a good diet, but it is basically the same for anyone past the point of leaving Mums breast.
We need to eat a principally Carnivore/Keto diet, where carbohydrates are either non existent, or a very small component.
If you delve into the many studies that say meat is bad, you will find they are nearly all originating from observational studies which were funded by The University run by the seventh day Adventists, Sorry I can’t remember the name at the moment.
I am not attacking the religion, simply stating historical facts.
Other studies that have been better constructed show there is either a benefit, or no harm from eating meat.