How can we help the underage children on Answers! whom seek Diet Advice?

Question

It has been proven that a human being grows until the age of 18. Unless the patient is an extreme case, one should not diet until they reach the age of 18. Of course, this is because a teenager and child need calories and nutrients to supplement healthy growing.

As I searched through this section, I have seen many inappropriate diet advice to questions asked by teenagers. Do you have any benefit to make a teenager to be triggered into a disordered eating cycle? I hardly thought so.

How are we to stop this bad advice being given on this site?

Answer 1

I concur. Quite frankly it isn't just teenagers asking questions that get inappropriate diet and fitness advice. But as the other poster said, besides offering advice you KNOW is correct, I dont think there are many options. Even idiots are allowed their opinions.

Answer 2

I agree with you, and I occasionally answer dieting questions from teens.

The best tip is to just give them solid advice to steer them away from unhealthy advice other folks might give.

Most of the young people on this site don't need to lose weight. But there are a significant group who do. Either way, the advice you give is the same:
1. Eat in moderation. Never deprive yourself, never stuff yourself. Eat enough to feel satisfied.
2. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Reject white flour and processed sugars. Switch to whole grains. Trim fat. More water, less soda pop.
3. Exercise moderately. 15 minutes of brisk walking every day will make a big difference. 30 minutes will do more. But don't overdo it, or you can hurt yourself.

If need be, you can give "thumbs-down" to any advice that is inappropriate. If the advice is REALLY inappropriate (promotes crash dieting, drug use, disordered eating behaviors), then FLAG it as abuse under "child protection." After all, the asker is probably a minor, and the behaviors being promoted can harm or kill them.

Lastly: VOTE. A lot of these questions get plenty of answers in a matter of a few minutes. But then the Asker or the Answerers abandon the question and it goes into voting. Come back and vote for good answers so that the archives aren't full of diet questions that have dangerous advice given as the Best Answer. And calmy accept that sometimes, the Asker will chose a Best Answer that is just plain wrong. If it bugs you, you can leave a comment.

Want some free points? Go to the In Voting tab in this section and cast votes for best answers for diet questions asked by teens. Vote for good things in hopes that someone might come along later and follow the advice.

Answer 3

First of all, given the horrible status of childhood obesity in this country, I think a lot of these questions are sincere cries for help. Second of all, the rest of the underage children asking inappropriate questions are already in trouble. If they don't get advice here, then they will get it somewhere else.

Regardless whether or not the questions are founded, we all can live healther. Kids are spending up to 6 hours a day (after school) in front of the television or computer screen. They couple it with high fat snacks and horrible school lunches. If they can get advice from this site to eat an apple every now an again, so be it!

Truth is, there are a lot of crappy answers on this site from people that don't know anything. Maybe if there were people qualified to answer these questions employed by yahoo so there was some place for these kids to go, then maybe we'd actually get somewhere.

Bottom line, is that if you don't ask experts, you don't get expert advice.

Answer 4

I will have to echo robbie's sentiments as far as the level of teens being on the internet unsupervised. These kids obviously don't talk to their parents about these types of issues, otherwise why would they be soliciting ideas from perfect strangers?

I mean you may as well go out into the street and randomly pull people over and ask them questions, it would be about the same.

As far as the level of advice goes, I don't think or at least hope that people aren't intentionally giving out bad or inappropriate advice, that could ultimately hurt someone. I would suspect that most of us here aren't in the medical profession and therefore not really qualified to dispense sound medical or even nutritional advice. So the next best thing is to use personal experience.

Right or wrong, if someone asks a question they will get a response.

The only kids we can really look out for is our own.

Answer 5

There is really nothing we can do to prevent bad advice being siphoned off to young adults here. Parents should be monitoring their computer usage, quite frankly.

FYI, there is nothing wrong with young adults having a sound diet and working with a nutritionist. We ALL have diets -- some of us have healthy ones, and some, unhealthy. It's the fad diets that kids need to be wary about, and it's up to their parents to make sure they don't go off and follow some and unhealthy method to weight loss. But it isn't up to the website -- people ask questions from other people, and the answers they get are only as bright and useful as the people who read them and respond.

In other words, a very small percentage.

Answer 6

Must be high-quality. I had a string of horrible lecturers. An historic girl who referred to as me dull as a moment grade trainer, but someway I had As and Bs. Fourth grade trainer was once an alcoholic who got here in inebriated probably. She acquired arrested for tying up a child with an extention twine, plugged one finish into the wall and threatened to place the opposite result in his mouth, hence developing her possess electrical chair. When I acquired to top college, the lecturers had been so petrified of thre scholars, that I did not be taught whatever from them I can actually say I have not ever adopted a guru

Answer 7

I'm a young teen too, and you're right about the advice bit.
But I know what's good for me, so I just tell them from a teenagers point of view what they should do ^_^
(That is, healthy diet and exercise)

Answer 8

if people would give healthy true advice like eat less junk eat more healthy foods excersize more. That is the only proven way to lose weight no matter what age.