Understanding your kids’ eating habits and attitudes towards healthy eating is essential for helping them make better choices. Studies show that children, especially teenagers, are particularly susceptible to marketing tactics and peer pressure, which strongly influence their food choices. Being aware of these influences means you can better guide your teens towards healthier eating habits.
7 ways to get your kids off junk food in 2025
1. Assess their diet
Start by evaluating what your teenagers are currently eating. What kind of food do they like the most? Do they express any interest in being healthier?
Surveys suggest that many teenagers are aware of healthy eating principles but often lack the motivation or resources to implement them.
Be realistic about what you want to achieve. It’s challenging to get most children of any age to choose healthier options when they are out of the home.
Additionally, many teenagers prefer foods high in salt, saturated fat and sugar, which are all addictive.
2. Influence food choices at home
Family habits play a significant role in shaping food choices and raising awareness within the family unit can help teenagers make better decisions, especially at home.
Ensure that healthier options are readily available and easy to prepare. If most foods available at home are ultra-processed, it’s unrealistic to expect teenagers to make healthier choices.
Keeping a variety of homemade snacks on hand is another great approach. Fruit and nut bars, veggie sticks with hummus or yoghurt with fresh fruit are healthy alternatives to ultra-processed snacks.
Ensure your kitchen cupboards and fridge are filled with items teenagers can use to prepare simple, healthy meals. Staples such as wholegrain bread products, wholemeal pasta, rice, healthy cook-in sauces (check the label for additives, salt and sugar), lean proteins including tinned fish, eggs and cheese are useful. Fresh or frozen fruits and vegetables should always be available.
Educating teens on basic cooking skills has been shown to improve their dietary habits, so try dishes like omelettes, scrambled eggs or tuna pasta bake. This encourages them to experiment with cooking, promoting independence and healthier eating habits.
3. Gradually incorporate change
Don’t push all changes at once and avoid nagging. Studies indicate that gradual dietary changes are more sustainable and less likely to meet resistance. Overloading teenagers with too much information about food can lead to anxiety about their eating habits.
Focus on promoting the consumption of healthier foods rather than demonising certain foods as ‘bad’, which may result in disordered eating in some teenagers. Emphasise balance and moderation – think about the 80/20 rule (reserving treat foods for the weekend and holiday).
4. Lean on social media
Identify what drives your teenagers to adopt a healthier diet and motivate them. Could it be better skin, improved sleep, overall mood or enhanced athletic performance? Research indicates that teenagers are more likely to change their eating habits if they see a direct benefit relevant to their personal goals.
It’s important to understand that many teenagers spend their time on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Encourage them to follow health-focused influencers, sports professionals, healthy food content creators or registered nutritionists and dietitians who are knowledgeable about balanced diets and share appealing recipes.
Sometimes advice from someone they admire can have a greater impact than hearing it from a parent. It’s important to teach your children that they shouldn’t believe everything they see and hear on social media, especially when it comes to health and wellness.
5. Create convenience at home
Batch-cooking is a great way to create homemade convenience foods; having a variety of home-cooked meals ready to go in the fridge or freezer is perfect for hungry teenagers.
Keep quick and nutritious options like frittata slices, homemade breads, dips and sliced fruit and vegetables such as cucumbers, carrots and red peppers to hand. Research shows that the availability of pre-prepared healthy foods increases the likelihood of their consumption.
6. Learn how to read food labels
When trying to avoid UPFs, carefully reading and interpreting food labels is essential. Generally, the longer the list of ingredients, particularly those you don’t recognise, the more ultra-processed the food is likely to be.
Some ready-prepared foods may have long lists of ingredients if they include lots of spices and herbs to create the flavour, so use common sense. It is also worth pointing out that healthy processed foods may contain ingredients that you don’t recognise but are completely harmless. For example, barley malt extract is added to high-fibre healthy cereals to improve flavour without adding sugar.
To reduce the quantity of ultra-processed foods in your diet, limit products with emulsifiers, stabilizers, thickeners, artificial sweeteners and flavourings. Although the full health impact of certain additives is still being studied, I choose to be cautious with ingredients like certain emulsifiers (such as carboxymethyl cellulose [E466] and polysorbate 80 [E433]) and artificial sweeteners like aspartame.
I also limit my intake of processed meats like sausages, bacon and ham because they contain nitrates. High consumption of processed meats has been linked to an increased risk of colorectal cancer, according to a comprehensive review of the evidence carried out by the World Cancer Research Fund.
Sugar content is another important factor. Watch for high levels of various forms of sugar, including sucrose, glucose, fructose, corn syrup, honey and agave nectar, and opt for green or amber on front-of-pack traffic light labels (the recommended daily intake for adolescents and adults is no more than 30g daily). Also, look at the salt and saturated fat content and aim for foods with higher fibre content, ideally more than 3g per 100g.
Health claims can be misleading and are often found on ultra-processed food packaging. Be wary of claims like ‘natural’, ‘healthy’, ‘low-fat’ or ‘sugar-free’. These labels do not necessarily mean the food is free from ultra-processing or is even good for you. Organic or plant-based food options, which are often perceived as healthier, can still be ultra-processed.
7. Manage snacking and emotional eating
We live in a snacking culture that is common for everyone but particularly adolescents, so ensure that available snacks are as unprocessed as possible.
Check labels to avoid additives and consider making snacks or single servings of one-pot dishes and soups at home that you can keep in the freezer and defrost quickly in a microwave or air fryer. Always make a bit extra to have leftovers for snacks.
Keep a supply of homemade breads, like bagels and wraps. These can be filled with various healthy options like cooked lean poultry, cheese, tinned fish, guacamole, hummus and salad or banana and nut butter. Monitor emotional eating, especially during times of anxiety or stress, such as around exams. Offer comforting foods like soups, broths, stews or casseroles instead.
This is an edited extract from Unprocess Your Family Life by Rob Hobson, available now (Thorsons, £18.99)
Unprocess Your Family Life: Transform your family’s health with easy unprocessed meals
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