The Sip Smart! BC™ Drink Diary is a vital tool used to raise students’ awareness about their drinking patterns, and thereby their sugar intake. We recommend that students fill in three Drink Diaries over the course of the program, and that results are calculated and reported back to students using the Sip Smart! BC™ Drink Diary Calculator (“Drink Diary Calculator”). Click here to download this calculator.
Once you enter the results of students’ Drink Diaries into the spreadsheet, the summary information requested for the Drink Report and Caffeine Report overheads is automatically calculated for you. Boxes highlighted in different colours will help you locate the information needed. Read guidelines on How to use the Drink Diary Calculator.
To determine the amount of sugar and caffeine that was used in the Sip Smart! BC™ Drink Diary, a registered dietitian reviewed several resources, including nutrition literature, online beverage company nutrition information, and labels of drinks in supermarkets.
Information about sugar amounts in the Drink Diary Calculator:
- Plain milk and unsweetened fortified plain soy beverages contain only naturally occurring sugar and will tally zero grams of sugar in the Drink Diary Calculator.
- 100% fruit juice contains only naturally occurring sugar. This sugar will be counted in the Drink Diary Calculator because children (and adults) don’t actually need juice.
- Drinks that contain both naturally occurring sugar and added sugar will tally only the added sugar in the Drink Diary Calculator. For example, 250 mL of chocolate milk has 6 sugar cubes in total, but as 3 teaspoons are naturally occurring sugar, the Drink Diary Calculator will tally only 3 sugar cubes.
If you prefer manual calculations, click here for alternate tools: Calculator Recording Sheet and Calculations Sheet.