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Low-carb Diets and Teens
Nonsense or Common Sense?
By Kelly Burgess
"The reality is that kids' eating habits are so bad at this point that if a low-carb diet can get them off junk food and soft drinks, it will be doing some good," says Simontacchi. "Yes, some of the diets encourage a lot of red meat, but which is more harmful, red meat or 46 ounces of soft drinks?"
What low-carb diets do encourage that Simontacchi thinks is a good trend is vegetables. "Maybe low-carb is not good, but they're now eating three servings of vegetables a day, up from zero servings before," says Simontacchi. "Maybe it will balance their blood sugar, and that's simply not a bad thing."
Nori Hudson is another fan of low-carb diets – within reason. Hudson, a nutritionist and educator, says the problem with almost everyone's diet is that we eat like marathon runners and then sit on the couch.
"Carbs are the body's preferred source of energy, but when we don't use those carbs, the body turns it to fat," says Hudson. "The foods that tend to be quick foods are usually over-processed carbohydrates, such as potato chips and crackers. These are not foods anyone should be eating."
Like Bark and Simontacchi, Hudson notes that no young person should diet. However, she deplores the eating habits of today's teens and, like Simontacchi, thinks a low-carb diet can lead to some improvement in eating habits – if it's done in a healthful manner.
In other words, low-carb isn't necessarily unhealthy, just the recent fad diets that promote it, such as Atkins. "The Atkins diet is simply too restrictive to be healthful for a teen who is growing and putting down 50 percent of their calcium in the bone bank for future bone health," says Bark.