Adolescent Nutrition: Assuring the Needs of Emerging Adults

Adolescents have unique nutritional needs when compared to young children and adults. As youth go through physical, cognitive, and behavioral development, nutrition needs are dynamic and changing. If these needs go undetected and remain unaddressed, the results can derail physical and social maturation and include life-long effects on health.

This comprehensive text offers a multidisciplinary perspective on aspects of adolescent nutrition. Using clinical cases, it covers relevant topics related to adolescent health including normal development, chronic health conditions, and complex biopsychosocial dynamics, among others.

The first section of the text contains an overview of adolescent nutrition that is further broken down into more specific topics such as developmental nutrition needs, needs of active youth and athletes and media influences on body image. The next section focuses on health disparities such as culturally appropriate care, health equity, international considerations and food insecurity. The following section specifically addresses eating disorders ranging from anorexia and bulimia to binge eating. Finally, the last section covers additional health considerations such as polycystic ovarian syndrome, teen pregnancy, substance use and gender non-conforming youth.

Written by experts in the field, this book is a helpful resource for primary care medical providers, registered dietitians/nutritionists (RDN), adolescent medicine specialists, as well as advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, psychologists, licensed social workers, and certified athletic trainers.