Maltese 10- and 11-year-olds are the second fattest on the planet, according to the latest research. Kristina Chetcuti heads to the supermarkets to find out just what we’re eating – and learns that Twistees and corned beef still top some shopping lists.

Switch on the television and it’s awash with cookery programmes; walk down Valletta’s Republic Street and you’re handed pamphlets with advice about food portions; drive on the roads and you’ll see billboards promoting a healthy food campaign.

Despite all this, how well are we eating? Not well at all it seems, if we were to take to the scales. Maltese children rank second fattest on the planet; Maltese men are the most obese in Europe; Maltese women place third in Europe; and as taxpayers we fork out about €80 million a year to treat obesity and related complications.

Are we paying any heed to the alarming figures? What kind of food are we buying and eating? The largest supermarkets on the island – Arkadia (Portomaso and Gozo), Smart (Birkirkara), Tower (Sliema) and Chain (Fgura and Zabbar) – supplied The Sunday Times of Malta with a list of their top 20 food and beverage items sold last year.

Fresh milk, meat products, bread and mineral water and Twistees top the list in all four outlets. In all the outlets the 2.5 per cent fat (semi-skimmed) milk is more popular than the 0.3 per cent fat skimmed milk.

The most popular fruit sold at supermarkets seems to be bananas.

Purchasing habits change depending on the profile of the customer base at each food store. At Portomaso – which is regularly frequented by tourists – supermarket baguettes, natural yoghurts, skimmed milk and foreign mineral water top the list. Customers there are even particular about their eggs, specifically preferring brown eggs.

The most favoured mineral water in all supermarkets is a local brand – with the exception of the supermarket in Sliema, where a foreign brand is preferred.

In Portomaso and Sliema consumers also purchase energy drinks – although the latter’s are a cheaper version to the ones bought at Portomaso. The only other beverage to make the top 20 is Coca-Cola.

The Gozo supermarket list is almost completely dominated by bread: plain baguettes, onion baguettes, seeded baguettes, ciabbatas, ħobza tal-Malti, toast, sliced roll, panini, while loaf, breakfast rolls and small buns.

In the Birkirkara supermarket, milk chocolate is a favourite, as are snails – a typical Maltese delicacy.

Ready-made meals are not popular but tinned food is, especially at supermarkets in the south, where tinned tuna, baked beans, tinned milk, water flavour powder mixers, soups and cubes and Pot Noodles are a favourite.

Corned beef – a remnant from the post-war era - also tops the list of the southern supermarkets, showing that in Malta there is a resistance to changing eating habits.

Nutritionist Daniela Cassola believes that family recipes are passed down through generations such as recipes with lard, shortening and high fat cream.

“Certain recipes may bring back memories and provide comfort.

“However, many a time, the problem is that individuals are unaware that they can substitute certain ingredients and alter cooking methods to produce a healthier meal without compromising on flavour,” she says.

The major fault in our diet, she points out, are the large portion sizes that are usually high in fats, low in fibre, and contain lots of sugar and salt.

In 1986, a World Health Organisation report said: “The average Maltese diet is not a healthy one. It is especially rich in fats and sugar and low in fibre.”

Almost 30 years on, food consumption does not appear to have changed.

Despite Malta’s location we do not follow a Mediterranean diet. Surveys of our eating habits have shown that our diet, influenced by history and culture, is deficient of fruit and vegetables, high on the consumption of biscuits, chocolates or sweets.

“We need to eat fewer processed foods, less fats, less sugar, less salt, and more fruit and vegetables and whole grains,” says Ms Cassola.

There are other problems: lack of physical exercise and “excessive snacking of high-calorie foods between meals”.

There is a discrepancy between the Maltese diet and a proper Mediterranean diet. Our coronary heart disease mortality rate, for example, was comparable to northern Europe.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that we are closely followed by the UK in the obesity rankings.

The average Maltese diet is not a healthy one. It is especially rich in fats and sugar and low in fibre- World Health Organisation

Maltese people seem to opt for the quickest and cheapest way to get 100 calories of food energy into their body: through sugars, fats and processed starches.

Unless we alter that, we will keep on fulfilling the 19th-century French gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin: “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you what you are.”

Top 20 most sold food items*

Fresh semi-skimmed milk
Bottled water
Meat
Bread
Eggs
Skimmed milk
Yoghurt
Cisk lager
Twistees
Canned tuna
Coca-Cola
Snails
Milk chocolate
Baked beans
Corned beef
Fruit (especially bananas) and vegetables
Ġbejniet
Galletti
Sugar
Tomato paste

*list compiled from data provided by Arkadia, Smart, Chain and Tower supermarkets

How can we improve?

The 2010 Strategy for the Prevention and Control of non-communicable Diseases in Malta puts forward a number of dietary changes targets for 2020, namely:

• Increasing our intake of fruit, vegetables, legumes and unrefined cereal.

• Consuming moderate amounts of olive oil as well as fish.

• Decreasing our intake of dairy products, meat and meat products.

• Ensuring the consumption of adequate food portion sizes.

• Engaging in regular physical activity.

Questions to ask when buying off the shelf

What you eat is not just about ingesting food that will do you good, it also means thinking about where your food comes from and how it is grown:

• Is it free-range, fair trade, organic?

• Is it locally grown with minimum food miles?

• Has it been sustainably caught, humanely raised, non-GM farmed?

• Is it from a small-scale, independent producer or a big-food, multinational monolith?

• When you look at the ingredients at the back, is the list riddled with E- additives?

• Will the grower get a fair return for his produce?