What is a Healthy Diet for Your Teenager?

Are you tired of contemplating as to what is a healthy diet for your teenager?

You are able to observe signs of tiredness and fatigue in your child in spite of trying your best to provide the most nutritious diet.

This can be quite stressful for any parent. Knowledge of what works and what does not, can help you make the right decision which would help your child develop a more healthy physique and mind.

The consumption of meat and its side effects

It is important to understand that non-vegetarian food requires lot more time for digestion than vegetarian food. The reason is simple, non-vegetarian food consists of complex proteins and fat.

Animal protein does not get converted to human protein immediately

Animal protein has to be converted into amino acids first and then human protein structures are developed from these amino acids. Fat needs to be converted to glucose; this again is a long process.

The fat gets stored initially and is converted to glucose on need basis. So there is no immediate energy which becomes available during the consumption of non-vegetarian food.

On an estimate, non-vegetarian foods take around 5 hours to get digested

If you mix rice or any other starch content in your food along with non-vegetarian food, then the digestion is further delayed and takes close to 8 to 12 hours. For example, when you eat a burger there is bread as well as meat which enters the stomach.

Bread is a starch content and meat is acidic. Starch requires alkaline digestive juices while meat requires acidic digestive juices. So what wins out? Alkaline mixes with acid to neutralize each other and you end up with both the foods undigested.

The stomach toils at digesting these two food groups and finally gives up, it throws the half digested food to the intestines.

If you are eating non-vegetarian food, make sure you don't combine it with any other food which contains starch

You can take good amounts of steamed or raw vegetables with the non-vegetarian food; the stomach can digest raw vegetables using acidic as well as alkaline digestive juice.

The consumption of fruits

Remember to provide good portions of fruits daily to your teenagers.

Fruits are rich in water content, they contain close to 80% water and all the necessary minerals and vitamins. Due to rich water content present in the fruits, the minerals and vitamins get absorbed easily. Fruits require a minimum of 20 minutes for their digestion and very little energy is wasted in digesting this food.

Always remember to eat fruits only on empty stomach

If you consume fruits after eating a cooked meal, it would stay in the stomach as long it takes for the cooked meal to get digested. This will result in the fermentation of the fruits which produces alcohol.

It is best to eat plenty of fruits for breakfast because the stomach is empty at this time. Fruits are made up of units of glucose called fructose. The immediate conversion into glucose ensures that the body gets its supply of energy without much toil.

Avoid the inclusion of dairy products

Milk and dairy products are hailed as essential foods in your diet. But how true is it? The elements in milk, which comes from animals like cows and buffalos, is not digested by a human stomach.

If you look at the animal kingdom, none of the animals that live in the wild ever drink the milk of another animal. Home grown pets are given milk and they get used to it. Most pets end up with diseases like tumors which are rarely seen in wild animals.

Diary products are difficult to digest and task the digestive system. It is better to take fresh fruits, dry fruits, seeds and vegetables which are rich in glucose and are easily digested instead of diary products.