Health & Preventive Medicine · Project 2 of 12

The Sugar You Did Not Order

How much sugar the family drinks without noticing

Seven days of drinks, converted to level teaspoons: the sugar your household never ordered and never saw.

The calendar this needs: Fourteen measurement days — seven consecutive baseline days, then the same seven weekdays logged again a week later — plus three evenings watching the tea being made, and the baseline week must start before a single drink is swapped.

Six weeksNo equipment on the paper route 20 written stepsMarked out of 20Free forever
The question

How many level teaspoons of sugar does your household drink in one week, and which single drink carries most of them?

Sugar in drinks is a product decision made by manufacturers and tea stalls, and it is measured in grams per hundred millilitres on a label that almost nobody reads. Governments in a growing number of countries now tax or regulate sugar in beverages, and manufacturers reformulate recipes in response, so the work of converting labels into an honest household total is done professionally by dietitians, public-health analysts and product teams. The method here is theirs: a defined population, a fixed observation window, a published composition figure per unit, a stated conversion, and a plain account of what the total leaves out.

Two acts. Find, then fix.

Every EAD project runs the same shape. The first act produces a number nobody in the room could previously state. The second act changes exactly one thing and proves whether that number moved.

Act 1 · Find
You count what your household drinks, not what it eats. Every drink taken by every person over seven days is logged by volume in millilitres, the grams of sugar per hundred millilitres are read off the label where there is one and multiplied by the millilitres then divided by a hundred to give grams, the sugar spooned in at home is weighed or counted in level teaspoons, every row is coded label sugar, added at home or naturally present, and the whole week is converted into one number: level teaspoons of sugar drunk.

A one-page costed problem statement carrying four lines: which household, level teaspoons of sugar drunk in the week with the label-sugar and added-at-home codes subtotalled separately from the sugar that is naturally present, the same figure projected across a year — a projection that assumes this week is typical, and a festival, a heatwave or a fasting month would make it anything but — and the rupees spent on those drinks in the week. Beside it sits a bar chart of teaspoons by drink type, largest bar first, with the source of every sugar figure named and the grams in one level teaspoon as you weighed it printed on the page, the standard four grams cited beside it as the published comparison.

Act 2 · Fix
You swap exactly one drink — one item, not all of them — agreed in advance with whoever drinks it, and you leave everything else in the household untouched. Seven days later you count the identical seven days the identical way, using the same log, the same labels and the same conversion, so the only moving part is the one swap you named.

A two-bar chart of level teaspoons per household per week, baseline against swap week, with the difference in teaspoons and in rupees, the swapped drink's own before-and-after line shown separately, a named list of confounders, and the household's recorded answer on whether the swap stays.

What actually gets measured

The numberlevel teaspoons of sugar drunk by the household in one week, in level teaspoons per household per week, with the sugar the household did not order — label sugar plus sugar added at home — carried as its own subtotal beneath that total
BeforeSeven consecutive days of logging every drink taken by every person by volume in millilitres, multiplied by the grams of sugar per hundred millilitres printed on the label or taken from a named open database and divided by a hundred to give grams, plus sugar added at home weighed on a kitchen scale or counted in level teaspoons, all divided by the grams in one level teaspoon to give teaspoons. Every row carries one of three codes — label sugar, added at home, naturally present — because fresh juice, plain milk and a home-made yoghurt drink carry sugar nobody put there. The sugar your household did not order is the first two codes added together, and the title of this project describes that subtotal, not the whole total. Taken before anything is swapped.
AfterThe same seven weekdays logged the same way one week later, by the same people, with the same log sheet, the same label figures and the same teaspoon conversion, reported as a whole-household total with the swapped drink also shown on its own line.
The honest partA well-measured failure scores higher than an unmeasured success. If the number did not move, say so and explain why.

If your household cannot run this

Some households cannot be logged: there is no kitchen scale, no co-operative household, no packets kept, or a learner who should not be asking at home at all. Run the identical method on school property with a member of staff: log the drinks sold or brought into one class or the staff room for seven days, read the same labels, weigh the same teaspoon, swap one drink for one week. It is marked against the same twenty points, on the same evidence. It is not a reduced version.

Every step, written out

Twenty steps in total — ten to find the number, ten to fix it. Pick the route that matches what your school actually has.

A sheet on the kitchen wall, a pen and a level teaspoon produce the identical teaspoon total; the labels are already on the bottles in the house, and the only figures borrowed from outside are for drinks that come with no packet at all.
You need: A large sheet of paper taped by the kettle, ruled into seven day blocks with columns for time, person label, drink, millilitres, spoons and the sugar code · A marked measuring jug, or a one-litre bottle and a pen to mark the household's cups and glasses once · A kitchen scale, or a level teaspoon and the standard four-grams-per-teaspoon figure written on the page as borrowed · The drink bottles, cartons, tins and sachets themselves, kept in a box for the week so the labels can be read at the end · A notebook and a pen for the evidence log, the failure log and the daily completeness note · Squared paper and a ruler for the teaspoons-by-drink chart and the two-bar comparison

  1. Set the rules

    40 minutes
    Agree who is being logged, on what terms, and rule the empty sheet before a single drink is counted.
    • Sit the household down together and read out one sentence: this counts drinks, not people, nobody is weighed and nobody is named.
    • Give each person a label — adult 1, adult 2, person 3 — write the labels at the head of the wall sheet, and tell everyone they may stop being logged at any time without saying why.
    • Tape a large sheet by the kettle, rule seven dated day blocks down it, and rule six columns across: time, person label, drink, millilitres, spoons added, and a sugar code reading L for label sugar, H for sugar added at home and N for sugar naturally present in the drink.
    • Write the seven dates in now, including the days you expect to be quiet.
    • Write across the top of the sheet: this project is about a product and a habit, never about a person's body.
    Write down: The person labels with no names beside them, the seven dates, the ruled columns, and one line in the notebook recording that everyone agreed and how they were told they could withdraw.
    Finished when: The wall sheet carries seven dated day blocks and no data, and every person being logged can say in their own words how they would stop.
    Commonest mistake: Starting the log first and asking permission afterwards. Permission collected after the fact is not permission, and a household that feels watched changes what it drinks before you have measured anything.

  2. Log seven days

    20 minutes a day for seven days
    Record every drink taken by every logged person for seven consecutive days, by volume.
    • Hang the pen on a string beside the sheet and mark each drink as it is poured, not at the end of the day from memory.
    • Measure the household's usual cup, glass and bottle once with a jug, write the millilitres of each at the top of the sheet, and log by vessel afterwards.
    • Log everything with sugar in it or on it: tea, coffee, soft drinks, packaged and fresh juice, flavoured milk, lassi, squash, cordial, energy drinks, sweetened yoghurt drinks and sweetened lemonade, and put a code against each row as you write it — L where the sugar is on the label, H where it went in at home, N where it is naturally present in fresh juice, plain milk, lassi or flavoured milk and nobody chose to put it there.
    • Log drinks taken outside the house too, marked with the letter O, and log plain water and unsweetened tea as zero rows so the week is complete.
    • Keep every bottle, carton and sachet in a box under the sink for the whole week instead of throwing it away.
    Write down: One row per drink with time, person label, drink, millilitres, its sugar code and where it was drunk, plus a nightly line on what was missed.
    Finished when: Seven consecutive days each carry at least one row, no day is blank, and the box holds the week's empty packets.
    Commonest mistake: Reconstructing three days on Sunday evening. Memory undercounts drinks badly, especially tea. Mark at the kettle, and where you did reconstruct, mark those rows as reconstructed rather than pretending.

  3. Read the labels

    50 minutes, plus 30 minutes for the shop visit with your named adult
    Get grams of sugar per hundred millilitres for every packaged drink from the packets in your box.
    • Empty the box onto the table and sort the packets into one pile per drink.
    • Copy the sugars figure per hundred millilitres from each nutrition panel into a table in the notebook, one row per drink, with the brand and the pack size beside it.
    • Where a panel gives sugar per serving, write the serving size in millilitres and do the conversion longhand in the margin so the working stays visible.
    • For any drink with no panel at all, go to the shop with a named adult who goes with you and stays within sight, ask the person behind the counter for permission before you copy anything, and write the shop, the date and the name of the adult beside the figure.
    • If the shop says no, or anyone reacts badly, stop, leave and write it down. Then tell the adult who knows where you are, the same day, and tell your teacher before the next session.
    • For fresh juice, plain milk or a home-made yoghurt drink, ask your teacher to request a printed composition figure from a dietetics department, a pharmacy or a college library on a school address, and write its source across the top of the table.
    Write down: Sugar grams per hundred millilitres for every packaged drink, the source beside each one, and the pack kept or the shop visit recorded for each.
    Finished when: Every packaged drink in the log has a sugar figure with a source somebody else could go and check.
    Commonest mistake: Copying the per-serving figure into the per-hundred-millilitres column. A serving is often more than a hundred millilitres and sometimes far less; do the conversion on the page rather than in your head.

  4. Weigh the spoons

    45 minutes, plus 10 minutes a day for 3 days
    Measure the sugar added at home, which no label will ever tell you.
    • Put a small bowl on a kitchen scale, zero it, add ten level teaspoons counted out loud, weigh the total, divide by ten longhand, and write the grams in one level teaspoon at the top of the sheet. This measured figure is the one every later page prints; the published four grams is written beside it as a comparison, never in its place.
    • Where there is no scale at home, weigh the ten spoons once on a shop's scale with a named adult who goes with you and stays within sight, or use four grams and write on the page that this is a standard figure you did not measure yourself.
    • Watch the tea being made for three days and count the level teaspoons that go in, asking whoever makes it to spoon as normally as they can while you count.
    • Where sugar goes into a shared pot, count the spoons into the pot, count the cups poured out of it, and write the division out longhand.
    • Level every spoon against the rim with a knife before counting it, and say so on the page.
    Write down: Grams in one level teaspoon as measured by you, the spoons added per cup for each home-made drink, the pot divisor where one applies, and a mark against anything estimated rather than counted.
    Finished when: Every home-made drink row carries a spoons-added figure, and the grams-per-teaspoon figure is either your own measurement or openly marked as borrowed.
    Commonest mistake: Counting heaped spoons as level ones. A heaped spoon can hold close to twice a level one. Level them against the rim, or weigh a heaped spoon once and use that weight instead.

  5. Convert to teaspoons

    60 minutes
    Turn the whole week into one number anybody understands: level teaspoons of sugar drunk.
    • For each packaged drink row, multiply millilitres by grams per hundred millilitres and divide by a hundred, longhand in the margin, to get grams of sugar.
    • For home-added sugar, multiply spoons by the grams in one level teaspoon, and add both figures where a drink carries label sugar and spooned sugar.
    • Divide every grams figure by the grams in one level teaspoon to get teaspoons, and add the column up twice, once from the top and once from the bottom, to check it.
    • Rule four summary tables at the foot of the sheet: teaspoons for the week, teaspoons by sugar code with L and H added together to give the sugar the household did not order, teaspoons by drink type, and teaspoons by person label.
    • Draw the teaspoons-by-drink bar chart on squared paper, largest bar first, with the scale stated and the finding as the title.
    Write down: Teaspoons per row, the week's household total added twice, the L-plus-H subtotal for the sugar nobody ordered, the breakdown by drink type and person label, and the chart.
    Finished when: You can say the household's weekly teaspoon total out loud without looking, and name the single drink carrying the biggest share of it.
    Commonest mistake: Reporting one enormous grams figure. Grams mean nothing at the dinner table and teaspoons mean everything. Convert, and write the conversion you used beside the number.

  6. Name the cost

    50 minutes
    Finish the costed problem statement on one page and choose the single drink you will swap.
    • Write four lines: which household and how many people, level teaspoons drunk this week with the L-plus-H subtotal named as the sugar the household did not order, the same figure multiplied out across a year, and the rupees the week's drinks cost from receipts or shop prices.
    • Beside the annual line write the caveat in the same breath: this assumes fifty-two weeks like this one, and a festival month, a heatwave or a fasting month would change what is drunk enough to make the projection wrong.
    • Copy the teaspoons-by-drink chart onto the same page with the grams in one level teaspoon that you weighed printed under it, and the published four grams a teaspoon written beside your figure as the comparison, not as the number you used.
    • List three possible swaps with the teaspoons each would save: replace one packaged drink with water or unsweetened tea, halve the spoons in one home-made drink, or change one bottle size.
    • Choose one, and only one, and write: 'For one week we will swap X for Y and expect the household total to fall from A teaspoons to B.'
    • Read the page aloud to the person who actually drinks that drink and have them sign and date it if they agree, or record their refusal and choose another swap.
    Write down: The one-page costed problem statement, the three candidate swaps with predicted savings, the chosen swap as one testable sentence, and the signed dated agreement.
    Finished when: Somebody who was not there reads the page once and repeats the teaspoon number back correctly, and the person whose drink changes has agreed on the record.
    Commonest mistake: Swapping everything at once because the total looks bad. Swap one drink. Change five and you will never know which one moved the number, and the household will abandon all five by Wednesday.

  7. Agree the protocol

    40 minutes
    Write down what must stay identical in the second week so the two weeks can be compared at all.
    • Write what is fixed: same seven weekdays, same people and labels, same cups and vessels, same ruled sheet, same label figures, same grams per teaspoon.
    • Write what is allowed to move: only the one drink named in step six.
    • Rule and date a fresh wall sheet for the swap week before any data exists, and tell everyone which day it starts.
    • Buy or prepare the replacement drink before day one, so nobody is stuck without a choice at the moment of habit.
    • Write your prediction at the foot of the page, date it, and have one person witness it with a signature.
    Write down: The protocol as a numbered list, the seven swap-week dates, and the witnessed dated prediction.
    Finished when: A blank ruled sheet for seven days hangs by the kettle and a signed prediction exists that plainly predates the data.
    Commonest mistake: Running the swap week in a week that is not normal — a holiday, a wedding, guests, exams. Pick an ordinary week, and if the week turns out not to be ordinary, write that down rather than hiding it.

  8. Run the swap

    20 minutes a day for seven days
    Log the swap week exactly as you logged the baseline week, changing nothing else.
    • Mark every drink at the kettle again, in the same columns, with the same person labels.
    • Give the replacement drink its own row with its own label figure or spoon count, rather than writing a zero and moving on.
    • Write the swapped drink as zero on the days it did not happen, and write it honestly on any day it came back.
    • Write one line each evening on how the swap held: kept, partly kept, or abandoned, and why.
    • If anyone asks to stop being logged, stop that person's rows the same minute, mark them withdrawn with the date, and carry on with the rest.
    Write down: Seven complete swap-week days, the daily kept-or-broken line, and any withdrawal recorded with its date.
    Finished when: The swap week carries every column the baseline week had, and the failure log holds at least one honest entry about a day the swap slipped or a drink went unrecorded.
    Commonest mistake: Quietly not marking the day the old drink came back. That day is the most informative day in the fortnight. Log it, and write what happened just before it.

  9. Compare the weeks

    60 minutes
    Set the two weeks side by side and report the difference honestly, including if there is none.
    • Total the swap week in teaspoons the same way, adding the column twice, and write the two totals side by side.
    • Draw the two bars on squared paper to one stated scale starting at zero, baseline against swap week, in level teaspoons per household per week, and keep the rupees off this chart — money gets a second chart of its own, because two different units never share one axis.
    • Draw the swapped drink on its own small chart, so a reader can see whether the swap worked and the total still did not move.
    • List every confounder by name: a guest, a hot week, a fast, an illness, a person withdrawing, a price change, somebody drinking more of something else instead.
    • Write the change as teaspoons and as a percentage, and beside the percentage write how coarse it is: with only the people in one household logged, a single person's rows moving in or out shifts the total by roughly a hundred divided by the number of people you logged, in percentage points, so do not claim a change smaller than that step.
    • Add one plain sentence on whether one week either side is enough to be sure.
    Write down: The two-bar chart, the swapped-drink chart, the difference in teaspoons and in rupees, and the named confounder list.
    Finished when: You can state the before number, the after number, and at least two reasons the difference might not be your doing.
    Commonest mistake: Explaining away a week that went the wrong way. Report it. A well-measured failure outscores an unmeasured success, and substitution — more of something else — is the finding a dietitian will most want to hear.

  10. Share and reflect

    60 minutes
    Publish the finding, defend it to real people, and record what the household will keep.
    • Answer ten to twelve minutes of unseen questions out loud, live, in front of two witnesses who sign and date the page: the log, the teaspoon total, the subtotal the household did not order, the source of every sugar figure, the one swap, the result and the limits. There is no recording on this route.
    • Read the one-page explainer to three people who drink these drinks and write down what each of them said.
    • Ask your teacher to send the two-bar chart to the expert who replied, with one question: what would you have counted that I did not.
    • Ask the household, without prompting them, whether the swap stays, and write the answer down word for word using labels rather than names.
    • Complete the relations ledger with ten codes, roles, dates and what each person replied.
    Write down: The defence page, signed and dated by its two witnesses, the one-page explainer, and the relations ledger holding ten coded relationships.
    Finished when: Ten relationships are logged by code with dates and replies, no person is named in anything shared, and the household has said on record whether the swap stays.
    Commonest mistake: Ending with advice about what people should drink. You measured a product and a habit for two weeks. Report the number, report the limits, and let the household decide.

What the student hands in

Nine pieces. Together they are the folder a parent can sit down and read.

1. Question cardOne card naming the household size, the seven dates and the person labels, and the question: how many level teaspoons of sugar does this household drink in a week, and which drink carries most.
2. Expert interview packFive questions for a dietitian, school nurse, pharmacist or beverage-shop owner, your weekly teaspoon total attached as one page with no names, the date the request went out from your teacher's school address, and the reply word for word.
3. Evidence logEvery drink row with date, time, person label and millilitres, every sugar figure with the label photograph or database page behind it, your measured grams per level teaspoon, and every spoon count with its date.
4. Failure logThe drinks logged from memory, the days the swap broke and why, anyone who withdrew and when, the label you could not read, and what each of them did to the comparison, all dated.
5. The buildThe logging system itself — the wall sheet or spreadsheet, the marked cups, the weighed teaspoon — together with the two-bar comparison chart of teaspoons per household per week, baseline against swap week.
6. One-page explainerOne page a neighbour reads in ninety seconds: the teaspoon total, the subtotal your household did not order — label sugar plus sugar added at home — stated separately from the sugar naturally present in fresh juice, milk and lassi, the drink that carried most, the one swap, the second week's total, and what this figure cannot tell anybody about anybody's health.
7. Identity cardA name and a one-line promise for the measurement so the household can refer to it by name, plus the single sentence you want repeated at somebody else's table, carrying the number and no judgement.
8. Relations ledgerTen coded entries, each with a role, a date and what was said: E1 the professional — a dietitian, nurse, pharmacist or shopkeeper; A1 to A3 the people affected by the drinks bill; P1 to P3 the peers who checked your arithmetic; R1 to R3 the people sent the chart who answered. The sheet matching codes to names is held by the school and destroyed after moderation. No health, financial-hardship or literacy information about a named person is recorded anywhere in it.
9. The defenceTen to twelve minutes of unseen questions, answered live in front of two witnesses who sign and date the page: the teaspoon total, the subtotal your household did not order, the source of every sugar figure, the one swap, the result, and the limits you accept without argument, with no name spoken. A recording is optional evidence and never the requirement, and on the No-Tech route there is no recording at all.

The expert they have to find

Ten logged relationships are required before this project can be marked. One of them is an expert, and this is who.

A dietitian or nutritionist in a hospital or clinic, a school nurse, a community pharmacist, or the owner of a busy tea stall, juice bar or beverage shop who knows exactly how much sugar goes into a day's takings.

How to find one

Name the institution and the role, not the person. Hospitals and clinics list a dietetics or nutrition department with a reception number. Government and municipal health offices employ public-health nutritionists. Schools have a nurse, and colleges of nutrition, home science or pharmacy have teaching staff. On the trade side there is the pharmacy counter, and the tea stall, juice bar or beverage shop that buys sugar by the sack. Give your teacher the list of institutions and roles you want approached. The teacher makes the approach from a school address. You do not search for a named individual and you do not contact anybody yourself.

What to say

Dear [name or role], I teach at [school]. One of my learners has logged every drink taken in a household for seven days and converted the labels and the spoons into level teaspoons of sugar, coded by whether the sugar was on the label, added at home or naturally present. Could you spare fifteen minutes — on a call with me present, or by written reply, whichever suits you? Their five questions are below.

What to ask

  • When you count sugar from drinks, what do you count and what do you deliberately leave out?
  • How far off is a household's own seven-day log likely to be, and does it usually undercount or overcount?
  • Which drink in a normal week do people most often forget to mention to you, and why that one?
  • When somebody changes one drink, what usually happens to the rest of what they drink, and how would I detect that in my log?
  • If you had my seven days of data, what one extra column would you have asked me to record?

If no reply comes, submit the five questions exactly as your teacher sent them, the dated record of every attempt, and one named published source answering them in their place. That route scores. The gate is met by asking properly and recording the attempt, never by compelling somebody to reply.

The defence

Eight of the twenty marks. A student who cannot answer these has not finished, however good the artefact is.

  • Would the second week's total have fallen anyway without your swap, and how do you know?
  • Your figures come from labels and from spoons you counted. Which of the two do you trust less, and what would it take to check it?
  • Somebody in the household drank more of something else during the swap week. Show me where in your data you would see that, or explain why you could not.
  • You logged seven days. Convince me seven is enough, and tell me what an eighth week of the year would most likely have looked like.

How far a student can take it

starterYou log seven days without missing a drink, read the sugar figure off at least five labels, weigh one level teaspoon, produce a weekly teaspoon total, and question one professional who works with food.
practitionerYou decide which drinks count and defend the boundary, cite every sugar figure to the label or database page it came from, and produce one chart a stranger reads correctly without you explaining the axes.
researcherYou write the log protocol before day one, justify a seven-day window rather than three days, and quantify the error introduced by unlabelled drinks, shared pots and drinks taken outside the house.
contributorYou set your household figure against a published survey of beverage sugar intake, defend your method to a dietitian who disagrees, and publish the anonymised daily log through your school, where your school agrees it may be published, so anybody can recompute your total.

If you want to go further

Log a second household of a different size for the same seven days and put the two weekly totals side by side per person, still using labels and no names.

When it goes wrong

  • If nobody replies to your interview requests - then ask your teacher to try the next institution on the brokered contact list, or to accept a written reply, or to arrange a short call with an adult present, and log every dated attempt as it goes out.
  • If the household or the site says no - then run the school version instead: the same method on school property with a member of staff, logging the drinks brought into one class or the staff room, marked against the same twenty points. Say on the page which version you ran.
  • If your baseline and swap weeks look the same - then report that as the finding, check the daily kept-or-broken lines to see whether the swap was actually held on all seven days, and look for a drink that grew while the swapped one shrank.
  • If a drink has no label and no database entry - then measure it directly: count the spoons that went into the pot, count the cups poured out, divide, and mark the row as measured rather than sourced.
  • If you run out of time - then keep both weeks at seven days and cut the number of drinks you cover rather than the number of days, and state on the chart exactly which drinks were excluded and why.

Before you start

Safety and consent.
  • This project counts what is drunk and nothing else. Nobody is weighed, nobody is measured, no calories are counted, and no remark about anyone's size, shape or appearance goes in the log, the chart, the explainer or the video. There are no diets, no targets and no use of the word should. Say plainly on the front page that this is a study of a product and a habit, never of a person's body.
  • Nobody is named anywhere, including members of your own family. Use adult 1, adult 2, person 3 in the log and use the same labels in the write-up, the chart and the defence. Anybody may refuse to be logged at the start and anybody may withdraw at any point without giving a reason; when they do, their rows stop, the row is marked withdrawn with the date, and nothing already recorded is used against them.
  • If anyone being logged looks uncomfortable, goes quiet about it, or says they would rather not, stop logging that person immediately and write it in the failure log as a recorded event with the date. A household total taken from fewer people is a real finding reported with its limits; a total taken from someone who did not want to be counted is not.
  • Nobody is denied a drink at any point, in either week. The swap in Act 2 is one drink, agreed in advance with the person who drinks it, and either of you can end it. Weigh dry sugar cold, in a bowl on the scale, and do not prepare extra drinks for the project.

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