Health-oriented teens looking for home-made and wholesome

What does a 15-year-old girl eat? The best way to find out is to go grocery shopping with her. NNB met Alex,* who comes from a middle-class British home, just after her daily run; it’s clear that she tries to stay healthy, and her shopping list confirms this.

Every day she prepares some things at home instead of buying them ready-made. Today she’s buying ingredients for a smoothie, a salad and granola. The smoothie needs bananas and raspberries, although she admits this is unusual: “Mostly I just use the smoothie mix…I buy the spinach, mango, kiwi and kale one. It’s actually cheaper than if you bought all the ingredients separately.”

She makes granola from scratch, and she explains that she doesn’t buy ready-made granola because it’s too high in sugar – she doesn’t like the taste, and doesn’t think it can be good for you to have so much sugar in the morning. “That’s like having dessert for breakfast basically, isn’t it?”

Alex gets her granola recipe ideas from Instagram and uses Quaker oats as an ingredient. “Oats are really good for you and Quaker are cheaper. I trust them. And they’re 100% wholegrain.”

“Loads of people try to eat healthy and do loads of exercise,” Alex says of her schoolmates.  “Like I’ve got a friend who does loads of exercise and basically has the same diet as me, but most people… eat lots of carbohydrates and things like that.”

Alex likes to make her own salads for school lunches, but her friends are quite happy to eat the chips and chicken burgers the school canteen serves every day.

They sometimes laugh at her eating habits and sometimes try the same thing themselves. For example, she loves coconut chips. “I have the Urban Fruit ones. I discovered them when I was on my way home from school. I stopped by Sainsbury’s and they had them. I just really like them. I brought them into school and everyone was like, ‘What are those?’. Then they tried them, and they started stealing them off me.”

Final Shopping List:

  • Bananas
  • Raspberries
  • Kale
  • Almonds
  • Oats
  • Coconut chips
  • Coconut oil
  • Frozen berries

*Not her real name

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