Some children still manage to sneak soft drinks into the classroom by disguising them in coloured bottles, despite being warned about the harmful amount of sugar they contain.

And although they are aware of the consequences of taking too much sugar, including diabetes and infections, some refuse to give up the sweetened drinks.

“One of the students told us: ‘I don’t want to change because I like it and I don’t like being sad’,” university lecturer Claire Copperstone said yesterday during a seminar on nutrition.

Organised by the Department of Food Studies and Environmental Health, the seminar discussed the relationship between health and nutrition.

Dr Copperstone was presenting results from a study on reducing sugar consumption and a 12-week pilot project carried out with 50 students aged 9 to 11 and their parents.

Within the WHO European Region, one in three 11-year-olds is overweight or obese and Malta is no exception. WHO recommends a maximum of six teaspoons of added sugar a day, which is less than the amount in a can of soda.

However, children are biologically tuned to like sugar although this tapers off in adulthood, Dr Copperstone noted, asking whether this biological vulnerability was being abused by food producers. During a focus group for her study, it emerged that the most popular beverages were soda and energy drinks.

The pilot study was meant to reduce sugar consumption – the children were given a water bottle and provided with water dispensers in the classroom.

At the end of it, however, there was only a small decline, and no increase in water consumption.

The girls tended to drink more water than boys, so even when targeting children, gender could be taken into account, Dr Copperstone said. While she described the results as ultimately encouraging, parents’ involvement was very low. “We need to find ways to motivate parents, especially since most are busy with work in the morning and children in the evening. We could consider targeting them through the internet, because leaflets are not attractive anymore. Our leaflets remained in the school bags throughout the project.

“It’s important to understand that changing the food environment is challenging so we should try to change behaviour because, at the end of the day, if doughnuts are not allowed in schools, children can still find them outside the school gates.”

In numbers

• Energy drinks have at least six teaspoons of sugar.

• A sweetened soft drink has up to 10 teaspoons of sugar.

• A tablespoon of ketchup contains one teaspoon of sugar.