The typical American youth diet is absolutely awful, and getting serious about youth health and fitness means changing their diet – a lot. No maybes or half-ways on this one, total youth health and fitness only happens with proper diet. Young Americans can exercise all they want to, twenty times a day, but without a disciplined diet they won’t get the body composition or the level of health that’s possible for them. In fact, if choosing between exercise and diet, excluding one over the other, diet would be the right choice, hands down. While diet and exercise absolutely go hand-in-hand, diet is really most important of the two factors. And while diet is that important, it’s also hard to manage, harder than exercise for most people and especially for a busy youth population immersed in today’s youth popular culture of consumption, leading to failure on their diet and nutrition goals.
At the most basic level, America’s youth should understand two types of nutrients exist: those providing building blocks for their bodies and those providing fuel for energy that runs their bodies. This is a vast oversimplification, and understanding this concept better comes through additional readings on this subject, but this is probably the most important distinction to make in managing youth diet. And by focusing on maximizing the building blocks and minimizing the energy sources, optimized muscle growth and body fat reduction occurs.
