chicken nuggetsYou probably have one food that you absolutely adore above all other foods. Maybe you've even said, "I could live on (insert name of favorite food) for the rest of my life." And yet, I'm going to bet that the daily diet of chicken nuggets consumed by 17-year-old Stacey Irvine would turn your stomach.

Parents! It's one thing to have a picky toddler. It's another thing to have a 17-year-old trying to live on a diet consisting of one (not terribly healthy) food. At least the little ones are still learning. The big ones should have figured it out by now.

And yet, it was kind of inevitable that some teenager was going to end up in the hospital and all over the news like this, wasn't it?

Teenagers eat some of the worst crap known to man (I'll cop to a steady diet of those little coffee cakes available at the end of the aisle in the convenience store and a diet iced tea, eaten every day for lunch throughout my senior year). And it's OK because it's just a phase that they'll grow out of, right? So they're picky, you have to fight the battles you can win with teenagers!

Yeah, wrong, wrong, wrong, and even more wrong!

They're still kids. They need the nutrients in their food just as much now as they did when they were still toddling around. Missing out on the good stuff means missing out on a big part of growing up -- the growing part. And you're still their parent!

Irvine's taste for yard bird covered in grease made her anemic and she now has trouble breathing. Maybe because she was supplementing the foul fowl with French fries and potato chips?!

Of course in typical addict fashion, Irvine is refusing to kick her bad habit. And therein lies the problem of letting picky teenagers be. Just because they have good metabolism now and boundless energy to burn it off doesn't mean a 14-year-old isn't going to pay for shoveling down fast food every day. Old habits will die hard when they're still trying to kick the addiction in their adult years -- if they make it there without collapsing first.

It's simple, folks: stop telling them not to eat that crap and start telling them WHAT to eat. Teach them good choices. You could start with: "If you insist on living on one food for the rest of your life, can't you at least make sure it has some nutritional value?"

Would your kid get away with a diet like Stacey's?

 

Image via yoppy/Flickr