Sugar in Your Diet

Sugar, Sugar, Sugar!!

Do children know the better lunch?

I chose to investigate if children knew how to tell the difference between a high and low sugar lunch. My hypothesis was that they wouldn’t since so many people these days choose to eat junk food over healthy options.

For my experiment, I first observed my fellow students and wrote down what common items they, and myself, ate for lunch. After this, I made 10 sample lunches that resembled common lunches. Some of the lunches were based specifically off of certain people and some were random combinations. To keep things under control, all the lunches were between 500 - 1000 calories. I didn’t want to make the calories too specific, like 600 - 700, so I could prove that a lunch with only three items could have significantly more sugar than a lunch with five or six. Next, I used the sample lunches to make a test with 10 questions which I could give to all 62 of my participants. The questions were set up so the participant circled which lunch they thought had less sugar. After the experiments, I graded the tests and recorded the data into two tables, one with how many people got each percent on the tests and one for what questions participants got wrong and right.

Before analysing the data, I decided that any grade 50% or below meant they didn't know the difference and any grade 60% or above meant they did. Forty six people got 50 and below and sixteen people got 60 and above. Shown by this data, the majority of participants could not identify the lunch with less sugar. When analyzing the data, I realized that 41 people got numbers two and ten wrong. This means that these two were very challenging for most people. However, the reverse scenario happened for numbers three and four. Only 20 people got them wrong and 42 got them right. I believe so many people got number 10 wrong because they thought that when something was Vegan, it had less sugar and was healthier. However, this is not always the case.

From this project, I learned that most children cannot determine which lunch has less sugar. My hypothesis was correct because I predicted children would not know which lunch had less sugar. Forty six participants got scores 50 and below, and only sixteen participants got scores 60 and above. Because more children had 50% or less, it means that they were less informed on the amounts of sugar they were eating. I believe my experiment was accurate, but it could be improved by testing hundreds of children and even adults. You could even go deeper into the experiment by comparing specific items like drinks and sandwiches. The general point I am trying to get across with my experiment is sugar is awful for the body and if we can help inform children when they are young of what is good and bad, we can prevent childhood obesity.