Page 36 - Exercise 3A

Page 36 - Exercise 3A

A healthy diet is very important, especially for teenagers. Let’s look at these three diets. How healthy are they? Johnny eats a lot of meat, cheese, bread and potatoes. They are all important for a teenage boy. But he shouldn’t eat so much junk food burgers, chips and crisps. These contain a lot of fat and salt. We all need fat and salt in our diet, but only a little. Johnny gets too much. The other problem with Johnny’s diet is that he doesn’t eat fruit and vegetables. This is very bad. We get important vitamins and minerals from fruit and vegetables. Johnny should eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day.

Now Emma. Her diet looks quite healthy at first. She doesn’t eat any junk food. However, there are two problems with Emma’s diet. Firstly, she just doesn’t eat enough. You should eat three good meals a day. You shouldn’t miss meals. Especially breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day. The second problem for Emma is that she doesn’t eat enough protein. Protein is very important for teenagers. Because it’s the thing that helps your body to grow. Most people get their protein from meat and fish. But Emma doesn’t eat them. She gets a little protein from nuts, and yogurt. But she needs more. So, she should eat plenty of cheese, eggs, and beans.

Lastly, Gabi. She eats quite a balanced diet. She eats meat and fish and eats plenty of vegetables. She thinks her diet is healthy. But in fact it isn’t because she eats too much sugar with sweets, cakes, biscuits and chocolate bars. Sugar is important, because it gives you energy. However, it doesn’t give you anything else. So if you fill yourself up with sugar. You won’t get a lot of the other important things that we need. Gabi should eat fruit instead of cake sweets, biscuits and chocolate bars.