Anne-Marie Sapsted outlines the long-term risks in vegan/junk diets
The young need iron in the soul
RESEARCH SHOWS that the more we are exposed to food and drink,
the more we are likely to eat and drink.
Obvious. Except for adolescents.In their case the availability and variety of food appear to have the opposite effect.
They are the group most likely to restrict their diets, either because they claim to like
only a small number of foods - often fast/junk like hamburgers, chips, pizza, crisps and cola - or because they become hooked on dieting.
Teenage girls in particular are susceptible to the animal welfare arguments of vegetarians. A recent Gallup poll commissioned by the manufacturers of vegetarian food claimed that a quarter of women under 24 no longer eat meat.
The difficulty is that adolescents who embrace the vegetarian ideal often ignore or are unaware of the healthy eating message.
Nutritionists are used to discovering teenagers with unbalanced diets, particularly deficient in iron. Many teenagers look tired and pale not because of devotion to studies but because of the warning signs of iron -deficiency anaemia.
Iron is vital for everyone, but especially for adolescent girls as they begin to menstruate.
A study on a group of 12- to 14-year-olds at one London school discovered that one in 10 girls and three per cent of the boys were anaemic. Fifteen per cent of both boys and girls were found to have borderline iron reserves.
Generally, vegetarians and dieters are three times more susceptible than meat eaters and non-dieters, with one in four showing signs of anaemia or low iron reserves.
While it is well known that iron is crucial for normal mental and physical development during infancy, describing the results of iron deficiency in adolescents is more complex.
Studies have linked it to a greater susceptibility to infections, particularly in the chronically sick. Other research shows a link with poor academic performance. The provision of iron supplements has been shown to improve all these problems.
Iron deficiency over a period of time could also have implications for susceptibility to bone disease, heart disease and obesity.
The richest sources of iron in diet are red meat, poultry and oily fish. Yet our consumption of red meat has dropped in recent years, and fish is not popular, although sales of poultry have grown.
"The problem is that young girls are persuaded to drop meat from their diets, but aren't told what they should be eating," says Phil Saunders of the Meat and Livestock Commission.
"People think that red meat contains a lot of fat, but over the years fat has been bred out of stock to the extent that there is now only five per cent of fat in beef. There is more fat in cheese, even cottage cheese."
