In this conversational interview, a mother of three who is also a nutritional therapist shares actionable advice for parents of teenagers struggling with poor dietary habits that can affect gut health and anxiety. She emphasizes that the most impactful change is ensuring teens start the day with a protein‑based breakfast—examples include scrambled eggs, banana‑coconut milk pancakes topped with yogurt, seeds, nuts, and berries—rather than sugary cereals. She explains that a protein‑rich first meal can influence healthier food choices later in the day. The second recommendation is a simple daily probiotic taken after the evening meal, which helps replenish beneficial gut bacteria that may be depleted by suboptimal eating throughout the day. She cites personal experience with her own children, noting improvements in recurrent infections after introducing a probiotic routine. The overall message is that modest, consistent changes—protein at breakfast and a nightly probiotic—are realistic steps parents can implement to support their teens' gut health and potentially reduce anxiety.
Chapters
Yeah, another thing I'd really like your, your input and discussion on is I do a lot of work with teenagers. I've got 2 of my own, so I know that typically their diet is absolutely atrocious. They bounce from fizzy drinks to chocolate bars, and if you get anything green, red, or orange in them, that's a good day. Hmm. Um, what is your Tip to help parents, mothers, or, you know, any teenagers themselves to get back in that place of putting their gut health in a better order, being realistically that they're not going to go from that sort of diet to a utopian diet in a week?
No, I agree totally because I have 3 of my own as well. Um, the first, the first and most important thing is exactly the same for an adult as it is for a teenager, and that is the first thing they eat in the morning needs to be protein-based. Now that might be that might be, you know, scrambled eggs. Or my kids grew up on scrambled egg for breakfast, um, because we think that, oh, cooking, um, you know, making cereal is much quicker than cooking scrambled eggs, but it isn't. It just really isn't. It's so quick. It's so quick to make scrambled eggs. Another thing that they do have now, now they're teenagers, is they make themselves some banana and coconut milk pancakes, and they'll have that for breakfast, and they'll dollop yogurt on it and things like that. And because they're older now, they all know, unfortunately, because they have me as a mum, they all know that what they have first thing, they're not going out of the house without breakfast and without something that is protein-based, basically. Now, I can't control what they do for the rest of the day, but I know that if I can make sure I get the right thing into them first thing, that's going to have an impact on the choices they make later on in the day. Um, so that would be the first thing I would say. Just look at what breakfast they're eating and how can you begin to bring more protein into it. Now, that might be you know, rather than going down the kind of chocolate Mini-Wheats or whatever it is route, let's see if it's a sweeter breakfast that they want. Can we do, you know, a dollop of yogurt with some seeds and nuts and some blueberries on it or something like that? It needs to be something that they will eat, obviously, because what you don't want them to do is to then leave the house for not having anything kind of thing, because that's no good for their productivity when they get to school. So for the first thing that we really need to focus on, and I've worked with quite a few, um, parents who've had children with, you know, making difficult choices at breakfast time, that kind of thing, and I've encouraged them to— we've, we've worked out how we can make it work for, for that teenager. So that first thing in the morning protein is really important. The second thing that I would always do is, and I do this with all of my kids, is they all take a probiotic every day. Because I, again, I know I can't control what they're doing at school. So if I know that, that at the end of the day when they've eaten their evening meal, they've taken a probiotic— and again, I don't administer it, but they're in a routine now with it. And that came from my daughter had quite a lot of tonsillitis and ear infections when she was younger, and they seemed to be repeating themselves all the time. And then when I became a nutritional therapist, I was like, actually, I think her gut health needs to be improved. So all we did was I started with a probiotic every day And she still takes it. They all take it now. They just take a probiotic once a day, and that just puts back the good bacteria that perhaps the choices they've made during the day hasn't, hasn't supported. And I know then—
So they can have last end of the day?
Yeah, after your evening meal, just take a probiotic, and then that will, um, you know, that, that will be digested through the course of the night and, and, and populate the, the bacteria in the intestine. And I— those are my 2 tips really that I would say to any parent of teenagers. Take a look at their breakfast and try and make sure it's more protein-based, and just make sure they're taking a probiotic at the end of the day. There's lots of, there's lots of, um, thoughts around should you take a probiotic all the time, should you just take it every now and again, etc., etc. In my opinion, 21st century life does not support the good bacteria in the intestine. There's 2 things everyone should take every day. One is vitamin D, and the other is a probiotic in order to support the gut bacteria, and that will have a massive impact on their level of anxiety and their ability to be able to function every day.
