Porter Treanor 1

Porter Treanor

HLTH-1020

Paul Roberts

6th April 2018

The Transition from Adolescence to Adulthood:

The Importance of Being Aware of Your Bodily Needs

In the early stages of most American lives during childhood and adolescence, we love to eat

sugary things, pizza and almost what ever we could get our hands on that tasted great. That worked for

a while for a lot of people during there younger days, but what happens when you get older? Do you

think that the diet pattern that was in use of adolescence will continue to sustain a healthy lifestyle for

young adults? This paper is to inform and talk about what happens during this life transitional period

with people’s diets and if the eating habits of adolescence is carried into your young adulthood and

could this be a cause for later life health problems.

According to Movassagh, Elham. Baxter-Jones, Adam and Kontulainen, Saiji. From MDPI in their

article Tracking dietary patterns over 20 years… they say that there is belief that the dietary habits of

adolescence could follow them into their adulthood. The issue then might be clear why this can be an

important transition in many peoples lives. First, there are different stages of your life that need

different dietary needs for your body. For example, when you are in your adolescence stage of life you

typically need more calories to fuel and nutrients to help grow, maintain and build your muscles, bones,

and support your developing brain. For a male adolescent around 12 and 13 you generally require

around 2,800 calories per day. For girls it is different, adolescent girls generally need around 2,200
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calories per day (Committee on nutrition, 2016). Although, this can differ on the amount of physical

activity you have throughout your day. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that there are three

main nutrients that we humans need to support for the changes going on in the body during this stage.

The first is protein, this nutrient helps to build and maintain muscles and the growth of new cells.

Generally, the adolescence in the U.S. get around double the protein that they need, but typically they

need around 40 to 60 grams per day. Then there are carbohydrates, carbs are the main fuel source for

the body. Often, the carbs that are taken in are from simple sources such as sugary treats. It is

recommended that adolescence should eat more complex carbohydrates for fuel because they can also

provide them with other needed nutrients, such as fibers. The general amount to be intaking should be

around 50% of the adolescence diet. The third nutrient is Dietary Fats, these Fats are important because

fat serves an important purpose in the body. Other than them helping form the membranes of cells and

giving them insulation for your body, fats help to absorb certain fat-soluble vitamins that are needed in

an adolescence diet, as well as providing some minerals.

Now does this differ from adults? Well diet really is unique to each individual and to what they

need in their diet, but generally these are for the average persons diet. This also differs between male

and female, like the example given earlier for the adolescent stage. According to SFGATEs’ article Do

Teens Have Different Nutritional Needs Than Adults? It states that “The specific nutritional needs of a

teen differ slightly from an adult due to metabolic and developmental differences.” So, its saying that

the growth spurt and the larger need for more energy comes from the metabolic rate and growing body

of the teen. That hits exactly where I am wanting to go with this essay. That it is important to be aware

of your bodily differences between life stages, because for one your metabolic rate sure is different.

What is the metabolic rate you ask. The metabolic rate is the energy that is used by your body to

do things that need energy such as, riding a bike, running, doing things physical with your body. Two, It

helps to maintain your body by replacing tissues and bones, etc. Three depending on your life stage, this
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part of metabolism helps with development and growth, so you can expect this part of your metabolism

to reduce once you are leaving your adolescence and settling into your adulthood. While other parts of

your metabolism can increase, that is usually from the muscles you have gained during adulthood. That

part is highly contingent upon the individual being physically active or not. If our activity goes down

along with your metabolic rate than you will most likely start gaining weight. According to Valentin

Son’kin and Ritta Tambovtseva in their article for the Institute for Developmental Physiology, Energy

Metabolism in Children and Adolescents: that a person’s metabolism rate can reduce up to one and a

half to two times from childhood to adulthood. Throughout life your metabolism works for different

things such as the growth of a teenager or the muscles in an adult. When you’re an adult your

metabolism isn’t as focused on the growth of your body anymore, it is more focused on running your

bodies muscles more so than other things.

Adults still need the same basic nutrition that teens do, but not for all the same reasons. The

protein and carbs and fats should stay around the same as a teenager maybe even a little more

depending on the individual’s activity level. The activity level of people is a very important role in health

habits that include diet, but that would also need to be another essay that would go more into the

exterior specifics. Although, I won’t go into it, here is a small statistic that could give you an idea of the

problem. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or (CDC) states that “Only 21.6%

of 6 to 19-year-old children and adolescents in the Unites States attained 60 or more minutes of

moderate-to-vigorous physical activity on at least 5 days per week.” If you take this and add the number

of children eating fast food on a given day, which is around 35% (Time, 2017), you could predict health

problems for these people later in like. Unless there is a more important time to intervene even past the

young adolescence stage. This is the stage that has been said to be the time of best health for people

but is being overlooked. The transition from adolescence to adulthood, I mean. This is a time where
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there are new things happening in life for the individual who’s moving out of home and going to college.

This time could be the make it or break it for those bad eating habits.

With life getting more stressful and overwhelming for the adult, it can be hard to know or take

the time to eat healthy. So, before the habit is cemented into you during later adulthood, it may be

wiser to make the changes during this transition. While your younger you can establish new habits that

will set your later life for the better. It is important to take the time before your life gets overwhelming

and full of responsibilities that should include your health, but don’t always have your physical health in

mind. The sooner the better to change unhealthy habits, but as a kid you may not see the importance of

the long term. When your older and have mostly established your habits and lifestyle it could make

changing the bad habit much more difficult. In this in-between stage you can make the choice for

healthy eating that you can establish into habits, you will thank you later in life.
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Work Cited

Bethany Fong, R.D., Do Teens Have Different Nutritional Needs Than Adults? (2017)

Better Health Channel, Food and your life stages, (2017)

Erin Coleman, R.D., Nutrition Needs During Adulthood (2018)

Lytle A. Leslie, Larson I. Nicole, Neumark‐Sztainer Dianne, Nelson Melissa C., Story Mary. Emerging

Adulthood and College‐aged Youth: An Overlooked Age for Weight‐related Behavior Change

(2012).

National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Physical Activity Facts, (2017)

Time, Do Teens Have Different Nutritional Needs Than Adults? (2017)

Valentin Son’kin and Ritta Tambovtseva, Institute for Developmental Physiology, (2012)