Teenagers lately they are turning to AI chatbots for everything-from writing your own boring homework to giving advice on embarrassing topics that could lead to an unwanted risk”cortisol spike” when asking a person.
Unfortunately for these teens, a new study by health researchers in Turkey found that free versions of five of the most widely used artificial intelligence models would consistently recommend meal plans that were so low in calories and key nutrients that they could stunt their growth. Worse, two independent registered dietitians who reviewed these teen researchers’ report results for Gizmodo, both agreed.
“Adolescence is one of the big periods of growth next to babies,” Taiya Bach, a registered dietitian, told Gizmodo. “They need more calories than adults.”
“Even if you’re overweight, you still have growth potential,” said Bach, a faculty member in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Nutritional Sciences, “because a bunch of your calories are still going toward hormones, growth, and bone growth.”
Unreliable virtual nutritionist
The researchers behind the new study — Ayşe Betül Bilen, associate professor of health sciences at Atlas University in Istanbul, Turkey, and her co-authors — asked five free artificial intelligence tools to create three-day meal plans for four hypothetical teenagers. All five bots—ChatGPT 4, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Bing Chat-5GPT, Claude 4.1, and Confusion—were given instructions that included information about the age, height, and weight of the relatively average teenagers to whom these meal plans were intended to guide.
Briefly, the instructions were to create a daily diet plan of three meals and two snacks per day for four hypothetical 15-year-olds. Those four teens consisted of one boy and one girl whose measurements would qualify them for the “overweight” percentile based on established criteria. body mass index (BMI) calculations and other boys and girls fall into the “obese” percentile based on the same BMI readings.
“We’ve seen variability,” Bilen told Gizmodo, referring to the 60 daily diet plans provided by the chatbots. “However, despite this variability, many models showed similar general patterns of underestimating total energy intake and altering the balance of macronutrients.”
Bilen and his colleagues found that these AI models regularly erred on the side of eating about 20 grams more protein than recommended by a professional nutritionist. The AI also tended towards an almost ketogenic style of diet planning, which usually suggested a higher fat intake than suggested by the most sensible nutritionists with lived experience as carbon-based life forms.
The results were published in the journal Thursday Frontiers in nutritionThere were dozens of suggested daily meal plans for adolescents in which approximately 21–24% of their energy needs would come from protein breakdown and 41–45% from fatty lipids.
The chatbots also recommended about 115 grams fewer carbs than what a dietitian would normally recommend, resulting in a deficit of about 700 calories per day—the equivalent of skipping an entire meal every 24 hours.
Bad for exercising teens, bad for sedentary teens
Sotiria Everett, a registered dietitian and clinical associate professor at Stony Brook University Renaissance School of Medicine in New York, told Gizmodo that the risks of such drastic calorie restrictions and nutrient imbalances will only increase for student athletes.
“Under-consumed calories can disrupt hormonal balance, potentially contributing to problems such as primary or secondary amenorrhea, such as delayed or missed menstrual periods in female athletes,” Everett explained via email. This lack of calories can inhibit the body’s natural production of both testosterone and estradiol, the main male sex hormone, he writes.
According to Everett, the stakes only got worse from there. “In athletes, chronically insufficient caloric intake can lead to low energy availability and a condition called Relative Energy Deficiency Syndrome (RED-S),” he said, “a condition associated with increased injury and fracture risk, poor athletic performance, and age-related delayed puberty.”
According to Bach, the potential for bone fractures, stunted growth and deficiencies in vital micronutrients, which are more common in carbohydrates, will still be present in adolescents who are less physically active.
“Basically, you need carbohydrates to grow tall. For example, you need it for linear growth,” Bach explained. “So if you don’t have enough carbs, you can affect your height potential.” (This should be sobering news for the “small” army.visiblemaxxers” and other young men who engage in all sorts of technical scams to increase their height.)
While Bach cautions that low-carb ketogenic diets show promise in helping people struggling with seizures and epilepsy, these regimens have mostly worked in close coordination with medical professionals.
“It’s pretty tough,” he said. “And that’s for a reason, because it can be a little dangerous, if you’re reluctant, you’re doing it yourself.”
“There’s a risk of kidney stones because the body processes ketones,” says Bach, “and too much protein can affect your bone health because it interferes with absorption of vitamin D and calcium—which is kind of a concern growing up anyway.”
Bach hopes the new research can lead to more research and a more nuanced skepticism toward data generated by AI chatbots in general. “I do a lot of teaching and using AI at the college level, which is huge,” he said. “There are a lot of mistakes.”
