Teenage girls eat less healthy food than any other group, survey reveals

Overall UK obesity levels unchanged from 10 years ago, Food Standards Agency study shows
Comments (9)
Buzz up!
Digg it
Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 9 February 2010 23.15 GMT
Article history


Britain's teenage girls' diet has been criticised by the Food Standards Agency Photograph: Getty Images/Stockbyte

Teenage girls eat more unhealthily than any other group in the population, government research has revealed.

The study, designed to shed more light on what the nation is eating, also shows that despite multimillion-pound government initiatives to encourage us all to eat more healthily, obesity levels in the UK are broadly unchanged from a decade ago.

Rebecca Smithers on teenage girls' unhealthy diet Link to this audio

The research was commissioned by the government's food watchdog, the Food Standards Agency (FSA), which said it was worried about girls between 11 and 18 failing to eat enough foods essential for growth and good health.

When they did eat, they consumed food and drink high in sugar and fat such as processed foods, sweets, chocolate and fizzy drinks, the FSA said, and failed to eat enough with important nutrients such as iron and calcium – found in leafy green vegetables and dairy products – which are essential for strong bones and to prevent anaemia. The survey found that among those of secondary school age, 46% were failing to get the minimum recommended amount of iron or magnesium, and fewer than one in 10 (7%) were eating the minimum recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Dr Alison Tedstone, the FSA's head of nutritional science, said the issue was "an area of concern" and added: "Broadly, teenage girls particularly don't eat enough. Overall they are a group of the population whose diets are poor. Young children's diets are generally OK, adults generally a similar picture, adolescents generally are poor. That's been the picture for a number of years."

She agreed that parental influence was key to good eating, as teenage girls and boys slipped into bad eating habits once they had more freedom from the family home.

"We know the girls are hard to reach," Tedstone said, explaining that the FSA had launched a magazine, Blink, on Facebook and Bebo to try to target teenagers.

Overall, teenagers are consuming too much saturated fat and sugar, despite government campaigns promoting healthier diets. Guidelines recommend that not more than 11% of energy should come from added sugars each day, but the figures are 16.3% for boys and 15% for girls aged 11 to 18.

Younger children aged four to 10 fare little better, with 14.4% for boys and 14.7% for girls. But from 18 months to three years, toddlers were near the recommended level at 11.2%.

Tedstone said parental influence was a key factor: "There are two sides to this. There is telling people, and some people will change because you tell them, and there is reformulation [of products], which is changing things without people knowing about it. That will hit the teenagers. We have seen some changes in the teenagers' diets, and the agency has only just started doing work with saturated fat, so we would hope to see more down the line."

Today's findings are the first from the so-called national diet and nutrition survey, a rolling programme which is the first such exercise for 10 years and will be updated every year. It polled 1,000 adults and children across the UK from April 2008 to last March.

Those who took part underwent a four-day dietary assessment and submitted food diaries, along with physical measurements, blood pressure checks and blood and urine samples. The programme is carried out by a consortium of organisations led by the National Centre for Social Research and involving the departments of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Free hospital, north London, and University College London's medical school.

Despite government guidance recommending that children do not drink any alcohol, the survey also found that 4% of boys aged 13-15 and 12% of girls of the same age said they usually drank once a week or more.

Overall, the survey showed that everyone from the age of four to 64 ate too much saturated fat, which can increase the risk of heart disease, although the amount has decreased slightly in the past decade.

Although on average adults are eating 4.4 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, two-thirds are not eating their recommended five a day. Men and women are eating more oily fish, such as salmon, but still well below the recommended 140g of oily fish a week.

Richard Watts, of the healthy eating charity Sustain, said: "We have had 10 years of mostly weak or voluntary initiatives to improve diet, like Change4Life. Where the government has introduced tough rules, such as improving school food, we have seen real progress; but unless we really challenge our 'obeseogenic' culture by taking steps like introducing proper protections from junk food marketing, these unwelcome trends will continue."

A spokeswoman for the eating disorders charity Beat added: "This report is not really surprising but it is depressing. We must do more to both educate and support teenage girls both to eat more and eat more healthily.

"In a world where teenage girls read magazines filled with often confusing and contradictory messages about food and dieting, it is not enough to police the school canteen. Teenage girls and indeed all teenagers need to have a better understanding of how healthy eating is a key part of ensuring long-term health."
A taste of better things to come

For a nation that loves nothing more than a banner headline announcing that the contents of our fridges are trying to kill us, the results of the first National Diet and Nutrition Survey are going to prove curiously disappointing.

Yes, there are concerns about sugar consumption by children and about the diet of teenage girls in particular, but it seems the rest of us may not actually be determined to eat ourselves to death.

Indeed, if anything we are eating a little more healthily. We may not have reduced the proportion of saturated fats in our diet to the recommended 11%, but at 12.8% we are not that far off.

Likewise, the amount of trans fats is well below the recommended maximum and we're not doing badly on our five a day. As the Food Standards Agency says, the report "does not identify any new nutritional problems".

Hurrah for us. The question is why – and on this the survey is less than revealing. The Department of Health can attempt to claim success for its five portions of fruit or vegetables a day campaign, launched in 2003, for getting us all to a heady 4.4 pieces. But even the FSA admits it has no comparable data with which to measure that change.

This first report from a rolling study is merely a snapshot. On the fats issue, while there has been endless advice put out by the government, specific campaigns have been limited because the subject is so complex. Instead there may be grounds for cautious acceptance that media interest in what we eat, combined with an understanding by the industrial food giants that customers don't really want to gorge themselves to an early grave, has resulted in change. It might be pushing it to call it a step change – obesity levels remain too high – but a genuine change it is: one led by consumers. Jay Rayner

The Gaurdian Magazine

Posted in: