Parents or adults play a big role of the gatekeeper as regards to helping young people or adolescents choose good nutrition. 

This was revealed  last week during a virtual meeting with journalists on adolescent nutrition advocacy.

Organised by Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Alliance Rwanda in partnership with Nutrition Cabinet ltd, the meeting aimed at enlightening media on its role in passing the right information to the public, since a big number of people rely on them to get the information.

According to Florence Sibomana, the Rwanda Youth Leader for Nutrition, parents are in a position of setting up a good environment so that nutritious foods are available and are on standby with reliable nutrition information and advice to adolescents.

Iron is avital mineral since there is increased need of iron during adolescence for both females and males when the adolescent growth spurt begins. Photos: Net

She explains that when it comes to food choices and health habits, adolescents like the freedom to come and go as they choose within a multitude of afterschool, social and job activities, they almost inevitably fall into irregular eating habits.

This is where the parents’ role comes in to help them stick to the right diet despite the challenges.

Understanding adolescence and nutrition

Adolescence is simply a period of growth from the beginning of puberty until full maturity, also the timing of adolescence varies from person to person.

For instance, the biological, psychosocial, and cognitive changes associated with adolescence directly affect their nutritional requirements.

Besides, the dramatic physical growth and development experienced by adolescents significantly increases their needs for energy, protein, vitamins, and minerals.

Sibomana further explained that the life cycle of adolescents, undernutrition in this crucial window of development can result in a slow height increase, lower peak bone mass, and delayed puberty, obesity which in young girls can bring about an early menarche, which then increases the risk of breast cancer in later adulthood.

Early adolescence encompasses the occurrence of puberty, the time frame during which the body matures from that of a child to that of a young adult.

Some of the changes include biological changes that occur during puberty, sexual maturation, increases in height and weight, Accumulation of skeletal mass, and changes in body composition.

According to United States National Library of Medicine, eating occasions for many early adolescents (10–14 years) are characterized by poor overall diet quality and overconsumption of energy. Fruit and vegetable, and whole grain and fiber consumption is low, and intake of sodium and calories from added sugars is high. 

Early adolescents consume 63%–65% of their daily calories at home, making the home and family environment an important target for interventions to improve diet quality and prevent obesity. Parental behaviors forming part of the home and family environmental sphere of influence within the Socio-Ecological Model include practices, such as making healthy foods available, establishing expectations for healthful food consumption, and setting a good example. These practices have been positively associated with overall diet quality of youth.

Meanwhile, Pivate Kamanzi, a nutritionist and dietician at Amazon Cabinet Ltd says nutrition concerns that affect adolescents include; overweight, substance abuse, vegetarian diets, eating disorders, hypertension as well as hyperlipidemia.

He further notes that adolescents need all the nutritional requirements such as carbohydrates, fats, minerals and vitamins as well as proteins for their whole well-being.

For carbohydrates, Kamanzi explains that they are a body’s primary source of dietary energy and that the recommended intake of carbohydrate among teens is 130 g/day or 45–65% of daily energy needs.

He points out that when it comes to fat, in general, the human body requires dietary fat and essential fatty acids for normal growth and development recommendations : 25–35% of calories from fat, with no more than 10 percent  of calories derived from saturated fat and no more than 300 mg of dietary cholesterol per day.

Sibomana on the other hand notes that with minerals, calcium is important for adolescents as its of great importance for the development of dense bone mass.

"Low calcium intake can compromise the development of peak bone mass, greatly increasing the risk of osteoporosis and other bone disease later.

Also, increasing milk products in the diet to meet calcium recommendations greatly increases bone density," she says.

She adds that another vital mineral is iron, since there is increased need of iron during adolescence for both females and males when the adolescent growth spurt begins.

 For females, iron, she says, is vital due to the onset of menarche while for male, more iron is needed because of their lean body mass development.

This iron rich food can be found in local food such as spinach, amaranth, beans, Isombe and also in meat organs such as meat or liver.

According to Kamanzi, vitamin C also plays an important role during adolescent growth and development as it is involved in the synthesis of collagen and other connective tissues.

This vitamin C also acts as an antioxidant and the good sources of it can be in green leafy vegetables, orange, lemon, pineapple, tomatoes among others.