1. Be a Role Model for Good Nutrition: Rather than nagging your teen about how and what to eat, model the ideal behavior yourself. Engage your teen by building a shopping list together and talking about the different nutritional values of foods while at the grocery store.
2. Don’t Give in to Junk Food Requests: Let’s face it, your teen is surrounded by friends and classmates whose parents may not place as high an emphasis on eating and living healthily. Additionally, Magazine ads and TV and Radio commercials feature sports drinks, candy and prepackaged foods – all of which are loaded with sugar, artificial colorings and chemicals that rob teen bones of calcium. Through open dialog with your teens and finding foods that taste good, are easy to prepare, and have a high nutritional value, you can start to sway your teen away from those nutrient-poor alternatives.
3. Think Like A Teen: When you were an adolescent, what did you think about? Most likely your appearance was one nagging concern. If you position nutrient-rich and calcium rich foods as a way for your teen to grow taller or have healthier skin, they may be more apt to listen. Keep your conversations relevant to your own teen’s concerns and be specific. Like less acne!
4. Make sure you understand how nutrients can affect their specific concern prior to engaging in the discussion.
5. Eat More Key Nutrients: This includes Iron, Protein, Zinc and Calcium. As males begin to grow more muscles  and  girls begin menstruation, they need more iron, Males will also need more protein. Adolescent males and females also should have more zinc as they go through puberty. Both adolescent males and females also need more  calcium.
6. Increase Your Vitamins: As your teen grows from preteen to adolescent, find ways to increase their vitamin intake.  If adding the recommended amounts of vitamins and minerals is not achievable through a healthy diet, be sure to have a multi-vitamin/multi-mineral supplement alternative.
7. Eat Smart Fats: During adolescents, teens tend to lack essential fatty acids the help with brain growth and development, because they eat more saturated-fatty foods and foods that contain hydrogenated fats, which can compete for space in the brain, displacing the healthier fats. Your teen may also not understand the difference between different types of fats and decide to cut it out of their diet all together. To overcome this, serve foods like fish for dinner and cut down on fries.
8. Promote a Healthy Body Image: Teen magazines consistently promote images of models and celebrities with “perfect” bodies. Your teen may learn to see these images, many of which have been air brushed to look “perfect” , as who he or she should strive to be. As a parent, you should teach your teen about beauty and the media’s unrealistic perception of “perfection.”