The Older Kids Get, The Less Healthfully They Eat Between grades 5 and 10, the older students are, the worse their eating habits are likely to be. It's not likely to surprise you that the more television watched by students in those grades, the more sweets, soda and fast food they're likely to consume (and the less likely they are to eat fruits and vegetables). Students who watch more television are also more likely to skip breakfast. Dr. Leah Lipsky and Dr. Ronald Iannotti of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development examined data from a 2009-12 survey of 12,642 students and found what they called a "cluster of unhealthy eating habits" that were associated (after controlling for other socioeconomic and behavioral factors) with television viewing. That, then, is their title: "Associations of Television Viewing With Eating Behaviors." But their work, published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, includes another, quieter association between a particular demographic characteristic of the group and certain less-than-healthy eating patterns: getting older. Students younger than 13 were more likely to eat fruits and vegetables daily. They were less likely to skip breakfast, or to eat fast food. They consumed less sweets and soda. Both groups (younger students and those 13 and older) watched about the same amount of television, but the differences in eating habits appeared more sharply among older students, suggesting the impact of another variable: freedom. Counter-intuitively, parental dietary habits have been shown to have relatively little correlation with their children's caloric and fat intake - a pattern that researchers attribute to the local food environment, peer influence, school meals and even governmental policies and advertising. But here, it may not be so much what the parents eat themselves as what they provide for their children. Older children and teenagers eat dinner with their families less often, because they are more likely to have sports or activity commitments during dinner hours. They're more likely to have the money and the opportunity to choose their own meals at times, and simply less supervised in general - which is entirely appropriate developmentally, but apparently has costs in the area of healthful eating. It's not surprising that teenagers left to their own devices would grab a bag of chips rather than take the time to create a nutritious meal or snack, but it might be a pattern that a parent could look to change. We're supposed to teach our children to be self-sufficient, and gradually step back as they become more capable. It's far more appealing to blame television viewing for poor eating habits, but could we be stepping back too far, and too quickly, when it comes to young teenagers and food?