Sarahmarie Innes & Katie Mahn
Many of us remember adolescence as a difficult time. Our mental well-being may have suffered because of increasingly busy lifestyles and academic expectations, body image issues, and peer pressure.
It’s also a time of increasing independence, which means more freedom and responsibility for your own dietary choices. Studies have shown this increased independence over food choices often results in teens eating less fruit and vegetables, having takeaways and snack foods more often, and missing meals such as breakfast.
When you think of hunger, chances are you do not summon up an image of a clothed, housed and employed individual. Yet in New Zealand there are accounts of children arriving for their morning classes without having eaten breakfast at home, and people working two jobs but still having to queue for food handouts. The food insecure within this country are not necessarily destitute individuals. They are also those on benefits, the under- or hidden employed, and the underpaid or working poor. In a country that is prosperous, free of conflict and agriculturally self-sustaining, a high level of food security is assumed, but that does not mean that the small pockets of those who remain food insecure should be any less disregarded, especially when the reason behind their insecurity is systemic.
Bone needs an adequate supply of calcium and phosphate to mineralise properly. Failure of this mineral supply (for any reason) results in defects like osteomalacia (impaired mineralisation of the bone matrix) and osteoporosis (overall low bone mass). In children, inadequate mineralisation causes rickets. There are multiple causes of rickets, but the main one is vitamin D deficiency.
My nine year old self heard the doctor’s stern words and took to heart that he was calling me fat. I was an active child and my family mostly ate nutritious foods. But when we ate, we ate a lot.