Ep.45 School Lunch and Weight Gain in Teens

Are school lunches helping  your teen's health journey?

 Join me as I discuss more the  impact of a la carte menus and vending machines on adolescent eating habits. 

The Association of the School Food Environment With Dietary Behaviors of Young Adolescents, American Journal of Public Health | July 2003, Vol 93, No. 7

If you're wondering…
❓ Why are teens hungry all the time during puberty?
❓ Why are teens craving sugar all the time?
❓ Why teens feel so tired—even when they sleep?

You’re not alone—and it’s not your fault.

Hormones play a HUGE role in how teens gain weight, feel energy, manage emotions, and grow.

Dr Gourgari is a certified pediatric endocrinologist, obesity medicine specialist and health coach for teens.

Each week, she break down how puberty hormones work—and how simple habits like eating better, sleeping more, and moving your body can help you feel better, stronger, and more confident.

We’ll talk about things like:
🥗 Are smoothies really healthy?
🍞 Are carbs bad for weight loss in teens?
💪 And how to stop emotional eating before it takes over your day.

Whether you’re a teen ready to make a change—or a parent looking to support your child the right way—this podcast is for you.

🎁 Want to jump in right now?
Grab your free guide: 30 Healthy, High-Protein Recipes for Teens at lifestyleforteens.com/recipes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:04

This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you're a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgery is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgory does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgary.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgary, and on today's episode I decided to talk about school lunches, and I had another teenager the other day telling me when I asked them, what do you eat for lunch throughout the week? And the options were pizza, burgers, mac and cheese, chicken tenders and things like that. So and that's not an exception that is actually a common story I get when I talk with teenagers and try to get an idea about what is their eating habits during the week. So teenagers spend a good amount of their time at school like almost a third of their life so it is important to get a better idea of how do they spend the time during the school, what are the options available and what can we do, if anything, to improve the environment where they spend all this time. So there was a great study which was published a few years ago, and the title of this manuscript is the association of the school food environment with dietary behaviors of young adolescents. It was published in the journal of research and practice by dr cubic and her team, and what they did in this study is that they actually asked grade seven teenagers they were almost 600 students that they were attending the school, of the foods that they were eating, what they were getting from school and if there was like what we call a la carte menus, meaning that they can buy whatever they want from what was offered in the school. And then they looked at the different options, what the teenagers chose to eat, and then what were their eating habits. So what they found was that when the schools had these programs where there was a la carte availability meaning the kids could select and buy what they wanted to eat they found that the kids tended to eat significantly less fruits and vegetables and there was a tendency for the kids to have more food, that they were mainly fatty food. Also, another thing they found is that the vending machines that are available at school well, in those schools that they were available, when they were available they also were associated with less fruit consumption, which makes sense, right? Because the kids are more likely to buy unhealthy snacks from the vending machines and less likely to have fruit.

Speaker 2: 5:08

And so what does that tell us? That tells us that there is a lot of area for improvement in the school environment and everybody of us teenagers, all the same as adults we have a certain power and willpower and conscious choice to get one food versus the other. But the environment where we live is very important and we can make our environment be more helpful for us so we can make the environment easier. So one of the environments that can help teenagers significantly is the school environment. So when you make the schools healthier, when you offer healthier options at school, when you remove sugary drinks from the school, when you remove the venting vaccines that have the unhealthy snacks, when you offer snacks, when you offer options that have a specific amount of fruits and vegetables, so that makes it easier for teenagers that want to get into a healthy way and teenagers that want to build healthy habits. It makes it easier for them. So the same way we need to make the environment at home easier, the same way we need to make the environment at school easier if we want to help our teenagers get into healthy habits and get into healthy eating patterns.

Speaker 2: 6:42

So as parents, as adults, as active members of our community, I think we ought to reach out to our schools community. I think we ought to reach out to our schools. We need to have those conversations and start to have those conversations with the school environment on what is the menu, how can we make it easier, how can we make the environment healthier for our students? And I know that oftentimes we say that it is better for the children to have and pack their lunch from home. Of course, that will be always my first recommendation. However, I know that this may not always be possible or it may not be possible every day. So it may be possible like a few days per week, which is still fine, but then that there are kids that don't have the ability to have lunch from home every day and they rely heavily on the ability of the school to provide lunch and sometimes to provide breakfast too.

Speaker 2: 7:50

So for those teenagers which are a lot of teenagers, fall into this category it is important for us to make that environment healthier and have the discussions with the school to provide that options to help our kids live healthier lives and make it easier for them to choose water, to choose over sugary drinks over sodas, to choose fruits and vegetables over sugary juices, to choose fruits and vegetables over unhealthy, fattier snacks.

Speaker 2: 8:28

So that's all I had to share with you today. I hope this was helpful and I hope this was a starting point that you can have with your teenagers, you can have with your school districts on what is the lunch that is served, what are the snacks that are available at school, how can we make it more easily accessible fruits and vegetables and healthier snacks to the kids that are in school? Take care and I will talk to you again next week and again, if you're not on my newsletter, I encourage you to go to lifestyleforteenscom forward slash newsletter. Sign up. I send weekly emails with weekly tips and updates on the podcast episodes so you never miss out on anything I produce. Take care.

Speaker 1: 9:23

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the program. It's Dr Gorgeri's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.