The received wisdom about adolescents is that they are plump junk-food consumers with no inclination to eat with their families or skills for cooking except by microwave. Some jokes on the subject are: "They're afraid of nothing, except a healthy meal", "They don't know which side their bread is peanut- buttered on" and "They want to save the planet but not wash the dishes."
According to the School Food Trust, 64% of adolescents "go without prepared school meals" and overmore than half don't eat – at least not every day – the amount of fruit and vegetables that their parents or the government tell them they should.
Adolescence seems as much about food as anything, possibly more so. The physiological and psychological developments between ages 10 and 18 are dependent on nourishment and often played out in food's presence – not just while lying in bed with a laptop watching Come Dine With Me, but with every food choice, food obligation, food disorder, food discovery or food joy. Dependence and independence, body and mind, and past and future are wrestled with on the plate and the palate.
Perhaps it is in individual stories of adolescents that the interconnecting dynamics of proteins, parents and maturity can best be found. Here, we ask six adolescents about their relationship with food.
Gabriel Antoinette
Age: 15
Where: East Finchley, London
Food attitude: Curry, burger and kebab enthusiast
"I'm thinking about food all the time," says Gabriel. He lives in a flat with his mother Maureen, older sister and, sharing his bedroom ("and my limited-edition Snicker bars''), his older brother.
Gabriel usually finds time for toast, cereal ("Lucky Charms is best") and a drink before school, then at morning break has a £2 beef or chicken burger from the school canteen. "Preferably with Coca-Cola and a Kit Kat," he says. In many schools, such drinks and snacks are brought in by, and sold by, students. At lunch Gabriel finds the canteen food "generally complete crap. They don't put any effort into it."
After school he'll visit Sainsbury's for sausage rolls and doughnuts, or buy a kebab if he's especially hungry. "I usually eat with family at tea," he says.
"Gabriel's got a very healthy appetite – he likes all foods," says his mother. "I'll make him shepherd's pie and vegetables at 5pm and he'll eat it up, because he's hungry. He's continental and international: he doesn't like my casseroles and traditional food – they get so much of it at school, they get bored."
"Mum is a good cook," he stresses. "But if she makes fish fingers I also go down the road for a Zinger and sides. When a friend stayed over one Friday, I had two curries to myself, then we had a kebab from Muswell Hill and another from down the road, and then a KFC. On top of that we had popcorn and loads of peanut-butter sandwiches."
Gabriel puts his "constant" appetite down to growing but also doing PE daily and sports outside school. It means he is over 12 stone but not plump. Because he loves food, he has a mental map of all the best takeaway outlets within miles of home: "Whetstone is best for chicken burgers, Wood Green for kebabs."
"Every 10 minutes I walk into the kitchen and look for food," he says. "At our neighbour's I'm opening the fridge all the time. I sometimes buy a loaf of bread and make a peanut-butter sandwich every half hour. I made a chicken curry with spinach for everyone for the first time the other day."
School lunches aside, what is Food Hell? "The Cabbage Soup Diet. That's what my dad used to read to me when I was little to punish me. He'd make me lie in bed listening to it."
What would Food Heaven be? "Nude women making me food."
April Partridge
Age: 17
Where: Chingford, Essex
Food attitude: Trainee chef at the Ivy
April lives with her mother Nina and stepfather Nigel, both caterers. April works full-time as a commis chef at the Ivy in London's West End while studying for a Professional Chef Scholarship from Westminster Kingsway College.
"When I was 14, the only thing I made myself was spaghetti hoops on toast. But at 15 I did two weeks' work experience at the Reform Club in Pall Mall, making canapés." Positive feedback from the club prompted her school to enter April for the Rotary Young Chef competition, and she was in the top four in the national final. "I made a rhubarb assiette consisting of a mini rhubarb crumble tartlet, a vanilla panna cotta with rhubarb, and poached rhubarb sticks, and a judge said it was 'Michelin Star standard'. It made all the countless practices worthwhile."
Then talent-spotting Gary Lee – senior head chef at the Ivy – offered her a Saturday job. Her very first day she plated up a squash salad, then learnt it was for Anthony Hopkins. At 17 she quit school to train as an Ivy commis chef. "I was quite shy but now I'm one of the lads," she says. "I'd probably do this job without pay. It made me confident socially, although I don't have much social life. When I do go to a party I have a wicked time, but then I'll ask Mum: 'Will you pick me up at 11.30? I'm working with knives tomorrow', and I have toast and go to bed."
"She's more methodical, artistic, hard working and consistent than some boys with 10 years' experience," says Gary Lee. "She might be better than me."
While Gary is April's mentor, Heston Blumenthal is her hero: "The way he takes food to a completely new level takes my breath away."
Apart from junk food, what food wouldn't April eat? "Nothing – I'd try anything, except horses, cats and dogs. I've opened up to offal, squid and other things with faces."
Asked her favourite place to eat out in Chingford, April replies: "My parents make such good food, why would I want to go out to eat? Anyway, at the Ivy I get breakfast at morning briefing, lunch at 11am, and dinner at 4.30."
Chloë Loubet
Age: 12
Where: Putney, London
Food attitude: Taking cooking lessons
Chloë lives with her mother Catherine (a foodie), her older sister (a food PR) and her father, chef Bruno Loubet. Bruno ran kitchens at Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons, Petit Blanc, the Four Seasons and Bistrot Bruno before the family moved to Australia when Chloë was three. Her memories begin there.
"Dad's beetroot ravioli and pea soup, at Bruno's Tables in Brisbane, was the first time I really enjoyed food," she says. "I spent a lot of time at Tables, watching, tasting sauces and naming the contents, hiding under tables and pretending to take people's orders."
From age six Chloë would often make her own packed lunch for school ("spring rolls or sandwiches with sushi-san, truffles and beetroot"), although she enjoyed school canteen food, too ("Unlike in England, it was tasty wraps and crab sushi salads"). When the family moved back to London over a year ago, Bruno opened the successful Bistrot Bruno at the Zetter Hotel in Clerkenwell. Chloë, meanwhile, had to leave behind barbecues but had brought "loads of Tim Tams" (Australian biscuits) instead.
She is increasingly keen to cook: "Dad comes home late during the week but with all the smells of the day on his cooking shirt – I want to have a shirt of my own with smells like that." She gets most time with Bruno during long Sunday afternoons at the dining table, with guests like his friend Raymond Blanc, enjoying conversation and "Dad's homely food, cooked from the heart".
"I love making food with him," she says. "I say 'Exquisite!' a lot and he has sayings like: 'It's not burnt, it's caramelised' and: 'I'm not God, only his brother.' He'll make the main course and me the starter, or swap. When we're out at a restaurant, I'll say: 'The egg is too…' and he'll finish off the sentence. At Bistrot Bruno I'll sit where we can send hand signals."
Chloë isn't afraid to criticise the food there. "I say: 'You should do it this way.' When the madeleines were too firm, I said: 'Try this – it's awful!' and he threw them all out. But I don't like it when Dad criticises my food."
Chloë is taking lessons with Francesco Mazzei, head chef at the celebrated Italian restaurant L'Anima. "That's fun. One lesson included octopus."
After lunch at school (currently incorporating self-made Vietnamese rolls), Chloë texts her mother about what the evening meal will or should be.
When home, Chloë likes designing and making cakes. A gingerbread house she recently built is impressive except for a single missing jelly bean ("I blame that on my sister"). For her 13th birthday, which will be American themed, she's planning cakes styled like burgers.
On the kitchen shelf is her private box of icings, sprinkles, space balls and cake bake decors; on the fridge her new Lakeland Electric Cupcake Maker. "When people move things, like my seriously cool finger grater that you slip on like a ring, I get really annoyed."
But what is true Food Heaven?
"Dreams where I wake up and think: 'Was that real?' A table of lamb I'm craving so much I'm dribbling. I love nights at Le Manoir Aux Quat' Saisons. Once Raymond's stepdaughter and I sped a golf buggy around the garden and knocked loads of things down, but when Raymond saw his CCTV the next day he was just laughing."
Louis Barnett
Age: 18
Where: Kinver, Staffordshire
Food attitude: Chocolate entrepreneur
Louis lives with his mother Mary and stepfather Phil, who both work for his business. As does his girlfriend Sally, who's his PA. Despite being "dyslexic, dyspraxic and dyscalculic", Louis had a very inquisitive mind as a youngster. "At nine, I bought the first Belgian chocolates on sale at Bhs with my pocket money. Chocolate has a complexity like no other ingredient in terms of flavours, textures and variety."
When he was 12, Louis announced to his mother: "I want to be a chocolatier." He had often cooked with her, but now he began selling chocolate cakes locally. At 13 he became Waitrose's youngest-ever supplier. The product and company Chokolit (his dyslexic spelling for chocolate) were formed.
"At 16, Louis got his chocolate champagne flutes into Selfridges," cheers Mary. "And now he's got his first massive order from America."
Louis calls himself an ethical chocolatier, with pictures of endangered species on the packaging of his 11 exotic gluten-and-palm-oil-free Biting Back chocolate bars, and with percentages paid to charities protecting them. "I released the first, the Orangutan, in 2006. Then I moved from the garage to a rented production site. One problem was picking the right staff: some couldn't take orders from a teenager. After securing an order from Waitrose for 100,000 boxes in 2007, we had to move the factory up north. I'm still trying new blends in the kitchen at home, but I'm more of a virtual manager."
"Mexico City invited Louis as a celebrity chef to its Chocolate Fest," says Mary.
"In the UK I'd signed 20 autographs in my life," say Louis, "but there I signed 4,000. I'm looking to set up a production line in Mexico soon. And in two years India will be the biggest chocolate consumer in the world. Can we handle it, Mum? I don't know."
Matthew Charlton
Age: 11
Where: Ormskirk, West Lancashire
Food attitude: Cooks for his parents
Matthew lives with his mother Vicky and father Charlie. Since last year, when his father's multiple sclerosis bound him to a wheelchair and his mother became manager of a home for children removed from their parents, meaning she often works late, Matthew has become a "child carer" and makes many meals for his parents.
"My earliest memory is of Dad making 'Action Man Porridge' with orange dye to give me superhuman strength," he remembers.
Matthew's mother says: "All the men in this family have always cooked."
His father has packed lunches in the living room, awaiting his son's return from school. Matthew then prepares the evening meal. "Dad likes to supervise me through the serving hatch," he says.
"One of the first things I made after Dad started falling down was tzatziki, red curries and stews, like scouses. Some nights I'll just make scampi and chips for Dad and meatballs for me, or pizzas, but I prefer to be more adventurous. I want to make salmon en croute stuffed with artichokes and wild rice."
Matthew has home economics lessons at school ("learning about healthy food") and is part of the school cookery club and another funded in West Lancashire for young carers. He grows his own tomatoes, carrots and onions, as well as collecting recipe leaflets during weekly shopping trips.
Does he ever go to McDonald's? "Only for special occasions, as a treat, when I get a good school report."
Tree Marshall
Age: 13
Where: Puckington, Somerset
Food attitude: Vegan
Tree lives with her mother Amanda, who raised her as a vegetarian. Aged 10, Tree left state education to be home schooled. At 13 she decided to become vegan, and persuaded her mother to join her. "I used to eat dairy products – tons of cheese, especially. And then I realised the cruelty to cows that being vegetarian involved."
Into the bin went all the cheese, eggs, butter, honey, chocolate, milk and milk powder products. "It forced me to be interested in food," says Tree. "As a vegetarian I'd got lazy. And I couldn't just switch to vegan cheese on potatoes, because it's like plastic."
It was receiving a vegan cookbook for her 13th birthday that spurred Tree to take to the kitchen in earnest, listening to Mika as she cooked. "I'm more interested and more confident. Now I'm a 'kitchenista'. Tonight I'm making onion tart with walnut pastry, and caramelised onions fried in olive oil, soya cream and dijon mustard, with new potatoes. In the mornings I make breakfast. Because I don't have to go to school, there's time to have proper breakfasts. Mum says I make better porridge and pancakes than her, but it's probably just an excuse to get me to serve her in bed."
"I trawl the internet for recipes," Tree continues. "What veganism's done is make me feel healthier and mentally healthier. While others my age are eating 99p burgers, I'm avoiding lots of crap, making meals and saving animals' lives. It would be nice if everyone was vegan in future. Or, if they weren't, that they didn't start arguments about it. I'm vegan, so deal with it."
