Perhaps that's why the Nestle Research Center of Switzerland compared the diets of teen-agers in 1965 with the way teens ate in 1996. The report, which appeared in the July 2000 issue of Archives of Diseases of Childhood , says American children are eating better than they did in the '60s. The proportion of energy from fat has dropped from 39 percent to 32 percent, and saturated fat has dropped from 15 percent to 12 percent. More teens are drinking low-fat milk, which is good, but total milk consumption has dropped by 36 percent. In place of milk, teens are drinking more soda and non-citrus juices.
Most teens still fall short of the recommended five servings of vegetables a day.
And, nationally, girls still don't get the recommended amounts of iron, folate and calcium. Maybe their children will do better.