| Youth and Food |
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| FaithLeader | |||
| Written by David Adams | |||
| Monday, 18 May 2009 16:23 | |||
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1. By and large, and I know that I am stereotyping, young women are cats, and young men are dogs. The first tend to stay in small groups and be very fastidious about their diet, cleanliness, and the second will eat just about anything, so long as there's a lot of meat in it. There are a lot of exceptions that prove the rule, but when you are feeding teenagers you have to balance the diet between people who are using food to refuel with people who want to be healthy and maintain a positive self-image. Most people see youth as unstoppable eating machines, but this is not always true. When you feed them, you need to take both types of people into account, and it is important to know who in your group belongs in which category. See item 4 below. 2. Young people eat bad food. In some cases, they may come from a home that does not or cannot practice good nutritional habits. There are a variety of reasons for this, and in my defense I admit that my decades of youth work have left me with an horrendous pizza and Cheeto addiction. I also cannot be trusted with caffeinated beverages - there have been incidents. Other people practice poor nutrition for other reasons, such as family socioeconomics (fat is cheap), poor education, or boundary issues. Whatever the case, young people eat some of the most appallingly bad food imaginable, often in large quantities. Candy, soft-drinks , pizza,chips, ice cream, whatever - if it's fattening, unhealthy, and obtainable, youth will eat it. Since you cannot possibly confiscate every bad food that the young people you work with will almost magically acquire wherever they go, it makes it all the more important to serve good food at "official" meals, when possible, and occasionally talk about food choices and their impact. Beyond being unhealthy, a lot of "bad" food exploits the environment, the poor, and other people. You cannot stop youth from eating it (though it helps if you can put down the candy bar, occasionally), but you can help them see that there are choices and that food that they eat as an "impulse" may be a bad choice. 3. Continuing in that vein, very few people understand where their food really comes from, the costs of obtaining it, and its effect on the world. There are a lot of environmental and social 4. Young people can be very picky. I'm sure that this is a shocking revelation to you. Seriously, though, a large number of the Young people in an affluent society like the United States are not only very brand-conscious and picky about their food choices, but are very vocal about it, too. You cannot just buy any soft drink for them - it has to be a specific type and brand! Many cannot eat food with genericlabels . In my experience, every youth group has a pizza culture, where you have to buy a specific type of pizza from a specific vendor in specific amounts. Failure to adhere to this unwritten rule will lead to boxes of uneaten pizza that you end up having to take home cold and eat later. Pulling up in front of the wrong fast food place can lead to outright rebellion at times, so it is important to keep track of your group's culture for that, too. Of course, this attitude is wrong on so many levels. That makes it a rich area to explorewith a group of young people, but be careful. This is such a powerful issue that "outright rebellion" is always a possibility. There is much more to say about food. It is, after all, one of the necessities of life. Everyone eats. However, there is nowhere in the world where people have as many choices or are as "spoiled" in their eating as in the United States. We have so much, and we take it so much for granted, that it is critically important to explore as many food-related issues as possible. Moreover, it is essential for young people tounderstand that food-related issues are not just tied up in the suffering of people who are far away, but in everyone's lives every day. What better place to explore the meaning of all these things than in a faith-based group? Photo Credit (1)
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Comments (3)
  written by matthewjmichael, May 19, 2009
At our youth function over the weekend we had pizza and Doritos, salsa and chips, and of course brownies and soda. The host did also provide grapes and pineapple, though no one seemed to touch those. But, the guys played 2 hours of basketball after eating--does that count for healthy?
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I always love titles that sound synonymous. “Ducks and Water” might have worked for this, too. If you hang out with young people, there are a number of things that you might have observed about their approach to food, such as: they can have voracious appetites – or eat nothing at all; they eat food that is incredibly unhealthy – pizza vendors beware; they can be incredibly picky; and they have a lot less appreciation for the origins of their food than you might otherwise hope. Because of this, I am going to get on my soapbox and address some of the issues.
justice implications to food, and many youth, as well as their parents, are ignorant of them. As a result, food presents you with a wonderful educational opportunity, whether through activities where you deny food; food drives; social opportunities with food; or other means. Very few things are as basic and necessary to the human experience as food, so very few things offer the same potential for teaching. Even teaching people how to shop for themselves (where many havealways had someone shop for them) can be an eye-opening experience. Wherever possible, I highly recommend having youth help shot for, package, and prepare their own food. This is a critically important set of skills that so many people miss out on while growing up.
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