The Vocabulary of Nutrition for Children, Adolescents, and Older Adults
In order to understand nutrition-related problems that occur within different age groups, you must first be able to use the vocabulary. Review the sentences below and select the term that best completes the sentence.
Match the words in the left column to the appropriate blanks in the sentences on the right.
picky eating
peak bone mass
life expectancy
obesity
arthritis
bone mineral density (BMD)
food jag
congregate meal
food insecurity
epiphyseal plates
1. ---------------------- usually involves avoidance of new foods, while a---------------------------------- represents a preference for a certain limited number of foods at the exclusion of others.
2. Adolescent bone growth occurs along the -------------------------------------- .
3. In healthy individuals,--------------------------- increases through early adulthood.
4. Rates of ------------------------------------- have doubled in children in the past 30 years.
5. Many older adults experience ------------------------------------- due to factors like limited income, poor health, or impaired mobility.
6. For individuals born around 1900, the ------------------------------ was around 47 years.
7. Severe ---------------------------------------- can impact mobility, making it difficult to obtain and prepare meals.
8. A ------------------------------------------------- can provide nutritious food and socialization for older adults.

Picky eating is a behavior in early childhood when they refuse to eat certain foods and only want the same foods, while food jag is when a child only eats a small group of foods, meal after meal. The epiphyseal plate is a specialized layer of hyaline cartilage where chondrocytes (i.e., the only cells found in healthy cartilage) proliferate and differentiate during longitudinal bone growth. Arthritis is an inflammation of the joints caused by different reasons (e.g., injury, genetic causes, infections, immune system dysfunction, etc), whose risk increases with age. Bone mineral density (also known as bone density), is the amount of mineral in bone tissues, being the best manner to measure bone health. Obesity can be defined as an excessive amount of body fat that presents a risk to health. Over the past 30 years, the prevalence of obesity has doubled in children and tripled in adolescents, representing a serious health problem (especially in developed countries). Moreover, food insecurity is a social condition of limited access to food for individuals in a household to live an active, healthy life, which can be used as a metric of how many people cannot afford food. Life expectancy is an estimation of the number of years a person can expect to live in a given country/region. Life expectancy around the world has increased for nearly 200 years especially due to medical progress and access to food. Finally, a congregate meal refers to a healthy meal provided to anyone age 60 or over that encourages older adults' social connections with other persons at the meal sites.