Vitamins for children and teens

Are Western children increasingly overnourished? Not quite. It is not always said, in fact, that eating a lot also means introducing adequate amounts of essential nutrients.

True, food in industrialized countries is overabundant, but nutritionally our children are very often over-fed rather than over-nourished.

It may sound like linguistic nitpicking, but they are actually two very different concepts. The nourishment, the real one, which helps to grow efficiently, to feel good and to build a healthy organism, does not come from the excess of carbohydrates and fats, which leads to accumulate useless and harmful extra pounds, but from a varied and balanced diet that allows you to get all the substances that the body needs, in the right measure.

So also noble proteins (present in fish, meat and legumes), mineral salts (calcium, phosphorus, iron, magnesium and zinc, first of all) and vitamins. All vitamins.

From antioxidants, such as A, C and E (contained above all in fruit and vegetables), essential to support the particularly active and demanding metabolism typical of childhood and adolescence, to those with specific properties, such as vitamin D (essential for absorbing and fixing calcium in the bones) and those of group B, which help transform carbohydrates into energy, to support brain activity and learning and to improve natural immune defenses.

Many reasons for an inappropriate diet

Unfortunately, today, obtaining sufficient quantities of these precious compounds through food alone is not easy.

Not only for the lack of time that often induces even the most attentive mothers to opt for ready or frozen meals, in which the essential nutrients have been partly lost.

But also because, while opting for fresh foods purchased day by day and cooked at the moment, in many cases the vitamin content of fruit and vegetables grown in greenhouses, out of season or at an accelerated pace tends to be lower than that of vegetables grown naturally.

To this are added, then, the well-known and inevitable “whims” of the little ones (which sometimes it is really impossible not to give up), the meals outside the home on which parents can have very little control and the increasingly widespread allergies and intolerances that often limit the range of foods that can be proposed with serenity.

When nutrition is not enough

To compensate for the low dietary intake, especially in periods of increased need such as seasonal changes, occasional ailments or weeks of intense study near the end of the school year, you can rely on multivitamin and mineral salt supplements.

Today we have an increasing number of formulations, including those specifically designed to provide all the substances that the child needs in balanced proportions.

Regular intake cycles of 15-20 days are enough to restore vitality and energy even to the little inappetent. Provided, however, that you do not grant too many exceptions at the table: the use of the supplement should never be seen as an easy alternative to a healthy diet, but as a precious ally of “reinforcement”, to be exploited with criterion.

The same goes for voracious children and adolescents, very healthy and very active, constantly engaged physically and mentally, including school, sports, music lessons, computer games and outings with friends.

Their need for vitamins and minerals is maximum, especially in the phase of pubertal development, and requires to be periodically satisfied also through specific supplements, as well as with an adequate and quality diet.