Question

 

This chapter covers a very wide spectrum of developmental stages, from toddlers to young children, to older children, to adolescents. Each stage comes with its own nutritional challenges and special considerations. Select one of these stages and discuss the particular nutritional considerations associated with it.

Answer 1

Adolescents:

Nutritional consideration is that they eat but not a diet which is balanced nor adequate.

This is the time when the body changes a lot both mentally and physically, also grows and develop. They have a lot of hormonal changes happening in the body, the breast grows, the individual grows in height and weight. The individual will be having or going through tough times in studies, so they would eat something of no nutritional value, this leads to both problems of obesity with nutritional deficiencies.

For eg: they will be well built will have joint pain, maybe due to Vit D defeciency or calcium defeciency.

Caring of the body image develop many behavioral changes like bulimia nervosa, these also can lead to various vitamin defeciency like electrolyte imbalance and micronutrient defeciency.

Eating of less home made food and getting into junk foods also leads to many Gastrointestinal conditions along with protein losing enteropathies.

Also we have to consider hormonal imbalances also leading to various nutritional problems, Cushing syndrome can lead to central obesity along with Vit D imbalance.