Look Ma, no veggies (except potatoes and corn)

This is a particularly hectic year for eighth graders Courtney Custis, Michael Loney, and Marcos Baez. The three stay at Young Achievers Science and Mathematics Pilot School in Jamaica Plain until 4:30 p.m. every day, then there’s homework, internships that they’re required to do, and applications for high school next year. Eating well or even paying attention to nutrition is not high on these students’ lists.

Courtney, a petite 14-year-old (she’s not quite 5 feet, and 98 pounds) who loves to eat, watch TV cooking shows, and cook, admits, ‘‘I just think about what tastes good. I eat whatever my Mom cooks.’’ She doesn’t like green vegetables, and says fruit ‘‘hurts my mouth.’’ Her favorite foods are pizza, french fries, and chicken.

The middle schooler is one of three students who agreed to write down everything they ate over the course of two weekdays for the Globe. All eat lunch at school — though sometimes they avoid that — and other meals at home. In order to see clearly what these three students are up to, we met with them first at their school, went back for a follow-up session, then reviewed what they wrote with a South End nutritionist.

All three teenagers eat their evening meal with their families and each of the students has strong preferences. Marcos, for instance, knows what to do when his mother serves green vegetables. The strapping teen (he is 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds) has a trick: ‘‘I don’t bite ’em; I swallow ’em.’’ Given a choice, Marcos, 14, would prefer a steady diet of mac and cheese, chicken, or turkey. He sits at a computer one to two hours a day, and watches television for another one to two hours. One night he ate clam chowder, chicken tenders, and rice; another menu was a rice and beef taco with soup and Sprite.

Courtney spends nearly twice the time that Marcos does watching television, one to two hours at the computer. One dinner included fried chicken, baked mac and cheese, corn, white rice, and ginger ale; the following night she ate steak with gravy, mashed potatoes, ginger ale, and a fruit roll-up.

Michael, 13 (he’s 5-foot-4 and 120 pounds), the most health-conx scious of the three, isn’t crazy about food that grows in the ground, unless it’s starchy, like potatoes or corn. ‘‘I eat any fruit, but I’m not into vegetables,’’ he says. Michael is mostly a pizza, tacos, and steak kind of guy. Every day he spends one to two hours at a computer, the same for TV. His day one dinner menu was steak tips, mashed potatoes, corn, and a glass of water; the following night it was roast beef, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, and a glass of water.

All three say they don’t much care for the school lunches; some days they simply don’t eat them. ‘‘Sometimes [before school] we go to the corner store and buy candy,’’ Michael says. ‘‘In the morning, we go to Dunkin’ Donuts.’’ There’s a location one block from school. On the days they skip lunch, despite a mid-afternoon snack of crackers, juice, pears, yogurt, or pretzels, all of which is provided by the school, the kids are pretty hungry by the time they get home around 5:30 p.m.

When we asked nutritionist Judy Phillips, program manager of Weight Initiative Now at the South End Community Health Center, to look over the diets, she said these pilot school students are far from atypical. In fact, they eat better than many students she sees in her work with middle schoolers in the Boston Public Schools. But she saw room for improvement.

Phillips noted that with more than enough milk and meat in their diets, all the Young Achievers have plenty of protein, which they need to grow. But they’re not eating nearly enough green vegetables. ‘‘Where is the folic acid? The beta carotene? The fiber?’’ she asks. ‘‘Fortunately, so much of our food is fortified. There is vitamin A and D in milk, and flour is fortified with iron.’’

The nutritionist points out that two of the three students list corn and potatoes as the only vegetables on their menus. That makes corn the only obvious fiber. As for the other missing nutrients — those she mentions as well as a plethora of other vitamins and minerals — she explains that they are all ‘‘essential for life,’’ a concept that is difficult for 13- and 14-year olds to grasp, or care about.

‘‘Another major concern is the palate,’’ Phillips continues. She is speaking, she says, about all teenagers. ‘‘The danger of starting poor dietary habits at an early age is that you are setting these norms about food. You get used to sweet, salty, fatty foods. To then switch to a ‘healthy’ diet, you’re going to think it’s a punishment.’’

For help with dietary guidelines and other resources, Phillips recommends mypyramid.gov, the website of the US Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. The interactive site is built around the Food Guide Pyramid, first released in 1992 and updated in 2005.

We went to the ‘‘My Pyramid Plan’’ section of the site, which allows users to enter their age, sex, and average level of exercise, to receive a semi-tailored recommendation for daily intake of calories, divided into the five basic food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, and meat and beans.

Because Courtney, Michael, and Marcos have gym at school once a week, and get home too late to be involved in sports after school on weekdays, we plugged in parameters for a 14-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, both averaging less than 30 minutes of physical activity per day.

A girl should be getting 1,800 calories, with 6 ounces of grains, 2 1/2 cups of vegetables, 1 1/2 cups of fruits, 3 cups of milk, and 5 ounces of meat and beans. She should aim for 5 teaspoons of oil a day, and limit the extras (fats and sugars) to 195 calories.

A boy should be getting 2,000 calories, with 6 ounces of grains, 2 1/2 cups of vegetables, 2 cups of fruits, 3 cups of milk, and 5 1/2 ounces of meat and beans. He should aim for 6 teaspoons of oil a day and limit extras to 265 calories.

Among the site’s tips are substituting whole wheat for white bread and lowfat or skim milk for whole milk.

Since the Young Achievers all help with dinner, they’re getting advice from parents. When she cooks with her mother, Courtney says, ‘‘I use too much salt. My Mom told me it’s not good for my blood pressure.’’

Marcos’s mother stopped buying candy, ‘‘because we tend to eat it during the day, and she doesn’t like that.’’ Michael is trying to cut out late-night snacking, because he knows ‘‘you don’t work it off at night.’’

It’s a gradual transition. Like most of us, he says, ‘‘Sometimes I’m cautious. Sometimes I’m not.’’