Healthy Meal Plans for Teens

A teenager's diet requires a complex balance between providing nutrition and sufficient calories. You may not have a hard time getting your teen to eat enough if her diet consists primarily of junk foods like chips, soda, pizza and other dietary no-goes, but emphasis should also be placed on health. Organization is vital when planning meals for your teen.

Frequency

First of all it is important to note that your teen will likely need a high amount of calories to support accelerated growth. This is especially true during growth spurts that can peak at age 13 for girls and 15 for boys. During growth spurts your teenage boys and girls may need anywhere from 2,400 to 3,000 calories daily to support healthy growth.

The frequency of feeding your teenager should be based on at least five meals daily. These meals can be divided into three main mealtimes and two snacks. Each meal and snack should include a healthy source of fat, protein and carbohydrate to provide complete nutrition. A good rule of thumb is to feed your teen every 2 to 3 hours after waking until bedtime.

Types of Food to Include in Teenage Meals

While your teenager won't eat foods that are much different than what you should eat, they do have specific requirements. For instance, teens need more iron in their diets, as well as calcium found in dairy products like milk, cheese and yogurt, for bone growth support.

When preparing a healthy meal plan, you must also ensure that your teen is getting the right portions and nutrients according to the Food Guide Pyramid. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends teens have 6 to 11 servings of bread and cereals daily. Vegetables are the next biggest group, at 3 to 5 servings, while the fruit requirement is 2 to 4 servings daily for your teen. The dairy group, along with the meat, poultry, eggs, dry beans, nuts and fish group, are both recommended at 2 to 3 servings a day.

Fats for your teenager shouldn't total over 30 percent of their dietary total, with 10 percent of their total calories or less coming from saturated fat. Choose oils that contain healthy fats, from sunflower, peanut, cottonseed or soybean. Keep your teenager's dietary consumption of oils, sweets and fats to a minimum as much as possible.

Helpful Tips

Providing enough healthy foods that your teenager will actually eat can be stressful if you don't figure ways to manage this process properly. You can add critical calories to their diets by ensuring they have enough breads, cereals, rice or pasta at each meal.

Adding toast topped with walnuts to a breakfast of an omelet, a glass of pulp-in juice and oatmeal is a great way to sneak in much-needed calories to your teen's diet. Applying these types of healthy additions in every meal throughout the day can help you to make an excellent meal plan for your teen.