Adolescent Nutrition and Development Insights
1. How healthy are the nutrition habits of today’s adolescents? What do they actually eat? Describe the two most common eating disorders? Nutrition Habits of Today’s Adolescents Among all the age groups, adolescents of today have the most impoverished eating habits. Studies show that more than 80 percent of youths in the United States eat unhealthy diets. Some of the foods preferred by adolescents include chips, pizza, pasta, and fried chicken. Prolonged intake of fast foods among adolescents increases the risk of developing disorders such as Anorexia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder. Anorexia Nervosa is both a psychological and eating disorder. People with Anorexia Nervosa fear gaining weight, have food restriction, and distorted body image. Binge Eating Disorder (BED) is a type of eating disorder when individuals eat large chunks of food and feel unable to stop eating.
Adolescent Nutrition and Development Insights
2. Describe adolescent cognitive development. Cognitive development in adolescent refers to the period between the age of 12 and 18 when young adults acquire the ability to think and reason. During this period, adolescents develop more advanced reasoning skills. This means that they develop more sophisticated reasoning skills such as exploring all possibilities inherent in a situation. Additionally, the adolescents in the said period develop the ability to think critically. The ability to think in adolescents occurs in areas such as attention, memory, metacognition, and processing speed.
3. Discuss the adolescent quest for identity. Include a description of Erikson’s and Marcia’s theories in your answer.
Identity in adolescents entails developing a strong sense connection with self and others. The way adolescents see themselves changes concerning peers, family, and social environments. Identity vs the role of confusion is the fifth stage of the psychological development theory developed by Erik Erickson. Adolescents in this stage seek for self and personal identity by exploring personal values, goals, and beliefs. James Marcia’s identity theory believes that identity is based on two things, namely occupation and ideology. In other words, identity depends on the role of an individual in society and a person’s beliefs on issues such as religion and politics. APA