Around 80 per cent of Form II and IV Maltese boys buy food from the school tuck shop – 14 per cent on a daily basis – a local study has found.
Forty-six per cent of 622 boys from government, Church and independent schools said they bought tuck shop food at least once a week. Pizza was the most popular item, at 29 per cent, followed by bread, 21 per cent.
The results emerge from a dissertation ‘Eating Habits of Boys in Secondary Schools: A Focus on Packed Lunches’ carried out by Christine and Rodianne Sammut as part of their B. Ed (Hons) degree.
Almost all respondents, 95 per cent, said they took a packed lunch with them to school – of these 84 per cent on a daily basis. Only 17 per cent said they prepared it themselves. The most popular packed lunch was a white bread sandwich with sliced ham or tuna, according to 38 per cent of respondents. Only 11 per cent of sandwiches contained salmon or turkey.
The selection of vegetables used in the sandwiches was limited to lettuce, 76 per cent, and tomatoes, 64 per cent. Apples and bananas also ranked high on the list of fruit taken to school. More than half, 52 per cent, said they had breakfast daily while 22 per cent said they had it regularly. The commonest food item consumed for breakfast was cake, 37 per cent, followed by biscuits, 22 per cent, a boiled egg and fruit.
Around 51 per cent said they had breakfast on a daily basis.
A number of students admitted that buying food from the tuck shop was expensive. Others said they occasionally bought from a nearby pastizzerija to eat it at school. The researchers pointed out that tuck shops offered unhealthy food items such as pies, breads, cereal bars, meat balls, pizza, pastizzi, sausage rolls, crisps and muffins but not fruits, salads or rice or pasta salads.
They didn’t want to consume foods prepared the previous day
“The problem arises when the students purchase foods from the school tuck shop which, however, poses a significant problem,” the study said. These sold a wide variety of foods rich in fats, sugar and salt, and displayed their products in a way that attracted students’ attention away from the healthier alternatives.
The study showed that most packed lunches were not nutritionally balanced and tended to be repetitive.
They lacked fruit and vegetables but, overall, they were not found to be inordinately rich in salt, sugar and fat. Students preferred to get their own lunch since their breaks were short and they did not want to waste it queuing.
Hygiene also influenced their food choices because they did not know who prepared the food and whether it was fresh.
They “didn’t want to consume foods prepared the previous day”.
Malta has the second highest rate of overweight and obese persons in Europe.