Cheap Eats.ie

16 Feb, 2010

The unhealthiest eaters of all…

Posted by: jean in: Healthy Eating

Image from www.sxc.hu

Image from www.sxc.hu

…are teenage girls, according to recent UK government research.  This does not come as the slightest bit of a surprise to me, having once been a teenage girl myself.  Being a teenager is a pretty horrible experience, as Caitlin Moran argues in this hilarious piece in the London Times, and requires a fair bit of self-medicating with food.   Moran also makes the valid point that chips are possibly the only thing that keep underdressed teenage girls from freezing to death on winter evenings.

I well remember the dreadful habits my friends and I had when we were young teenagers – hours spent lolling around in McDonalds, having two or three of whatever the cheapest thing on the menu was.  School lunchtimes were spent trudging en masse to a nearby sandwich shop and buying cheap white rolls stuffed full of coleslaw.  If you were feeling a bit rich, you might ask them to throw in some ham or cheese.   Slumber parties or anything like that always involved mountains of utter crap.  But when you’re a young teenager, what else is there to do? And junk food goes so well with hanging around carparks at nighttime drinking cans of scrumpy, or crying in your bedroom.

So to our female readers, do you remember your teenage eating habits? Were you subsisting on chips or getting your five fruit and veg a day like a good girl?

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10 Responses to "The unhealthiest eaters of all…"

1 | claire

February 16th, 2010 at 3:15 pm

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I was sent out with a packed lunch and some fruit followed by a homecooked dinner when I got home at 4.30 then tea at 7.30. There were no cakes, biccies or anything like that in the house at all so there was no temptation. Weekends were an exception though but you have to livea little. My village was 15 miles from the nearest city with no bus service so lolling in cafes never happened. There was always a trip to the Golden Grill in Limerick after the dentist though!

2 | Sarah

February 16th, 2010 at 3:32 pm

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I’m actually surprised by those stats. Teenage girls are much more educated about healthy food than I was (I had a cheese salad roll every day for lunch). But I guess they have more money too, which means more trips to the tuck shop.

3 | claire

February 16th, 2010 at 4:00 pm

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Its a UK study too. I dont think it can be directly applied here.

4 | jean

February 17th, 2010 at 11:56 am

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Hmmmm… I don’t know. I see plenty of teenage girls horsing down chips every evening outside my local chipper, and there’s no shortage of them in McDonald’s etc. They may be more educated about food than we were, but they’re also educated about other unhealthy things, and still choose to do them – like smoking, or getting off with squinty little creeps behind the bike sheds. It’s a time of your life where risks don’t really mean anything to you.

5 | claire

February 17th, 2010 at 12:07 pm

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More teenage girls smoke than boys to curb appetite. As for the squinty creeps, you have to practice on something. :D

6 | Paula

February 17th, 2010 at 1:59 pm

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It was phenomenol how much fatty food myself and my friends could put away in our teens, favourites were ham, cheese and coleslaw rolls from spar with a packet of hunky dorys and followed by a snickers bar and a can of coke, it was also not unusual to eat ham and cheese toasted sandwiches at half eleven at night. And we were so slim!

7 | jean

February 17th, 2010 at 4:07 pm

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Spot on Paula – it’s also a time of your life where your metabolism works with you instead of against you!

8 | claire

February 17th, 2010 at 4:28 pm

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And your hair did what you wanted it to…ah the 90s.

9 | jean

February 17th, 2010 at 4:33 pm

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Your hair did what you wanted it to when you were a teenager??! You were truly blessed…. :)

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