Trinity will not move to ban sugary drinks, the College has said, after University College Dublin (UCD) last week prohibited the sale of high-sugar beverages on its campus.
In an email to The University Times, Martina Mullen, the College’s Health Promotion Officer, said there are “no plans” for Trinity to follow the lead of UCD: “Rather than banning what we don’t want people to do, for a number of years we have been encouraging people to do what we do want them to do, in this case, drink water.”
UCD has banned sugary drinks but will still allow the sale of diet sodas, zero-calorie drinks and 100 per cent fruit juices, but Mullen said Trinity was instead facilitating a “student led campaign to promote water”, as well as installing water fountains across the campus. The impact of sugary drinks on health is extremely detrimental. One of the many health problems consuming too much sugar can lead to is tooth decay. Anyone suffering from this should visit a Dentist Fort Wayne for treatment and advice.
Since 2013, Trinity has been attempting to go tobacco free, a campaign in which Mullen and Healthy Trinity played an integral role. Since the introduction of smoke-free zones, smoking on campus has decreased by an average of 83 per cent. Mullen said she was “concerned that students will think we want to go on a banning spree”.
“Smoking is so detrimental to the health of those who smoke and people around them that the government aims to ban it completely. We are acting in line with government policy. There is no national policy to ban fizzy drinks and so Trinity doesnt [sic] have one either.”
A paper published this year by second-year medicine students on behalf of Healthy Trinity found that less than five per cent of Trinity students consume fizzy drinks every day.
