Adolescent Growth and Development

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Physiologic Growth

The process of physically developing from a child to an adult is called puberty. The slow growth of late childhood begins to accelerate with pubescence until the rate is as rapid as that of early infancy. Stature growth continues at an even pace until the growth spurt. Before puberty, children grow approximately 2 to 3 inches a year and gain around 5 lbs a year. Adolescence is the only time in life besides birth when the velocity of growth actually increases. Enormous variability exists in the

Growth as a Basis for Nutritional Requirements

There is a lack of specific experimental data on which to base the nutrient needs of adolescents. The Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs) (12), (13) are reference values that are quantitative estimates of nutrient intakes to be used for planning and assessing diets for healthy people. They include recommended daily allowances (RDAs) as goals for intakes by individual and present 3 additional types of reference values. These include Adequate Intakes (AI), Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL), and

Typical Nutrition Patterns

The growing independence, increased participation in social life, and generally busy schedules of adolescents influence their eating habits. They often eat rapidly and away from the home. They are beginning to buy and prepare more food for themselves. In fact, much food advertising is targeted directly at teens. Research (27) shows that teens directly spend more than $5.4 billion in fast food restaurants and more than $9.6 billion in food and snack stores each year. Vending machine purchases

Conclusions

Adolescence is one of the most challenging periods in human development. Because of the extent of the physical and psychological changes taking place, a number of important issues arise that influence the nutrition well being of the teenager. Knowledge of the developmental processes is a prerequisite to understanding the nutrition aspects of this period of life. Understanding the nutritional and physical activity needs for adolescents will help nutrition professionals provide counseling and

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