Thanks to the scary results of a survey of 7–9-year olds by the National Hydration Council, the council has joined forces with the Childrens’ Food Trust and Stefan Gates, star of CBBC’s Gastronauts and Incredible Edibles, to try to persuade children to drink more water. And much persuasion is obviously needed…
The ‘headline’ findings from the survey were that:
• Nearly 10% of the kids thought that the body could survive without any water at all – while…
• Nearly 40% thought that their bodies needed fruit juice to survive – ouch….
• 11% believed that their bodies needed sports drinks to stay alive – someone has been doing a great marketing campaign there…
• Only 50% of the children actually drank water at school while…
• 40% had to be told to drink water by their parents before they did so
Yet, ‘children are at greater risk of dehydration than adults due to their higher surface-to-body weight ratio and smaller reserves of body fluids’. Moreover, although studies have shown that drinking water can improve children’s visual attention and fine motor skills, less than 30% believe that drinking water helped them to concentrate.
Moreover, 35% did not drink water when thirsty and 42% did not drink water while playing sport or exercising.
The Childrens’ Food Trust and the Hydration Council have come up with a ‘Wise up to Water’ campaign which they are going to roll out across primary schools. This will include a ‘Wacky Water Challenge’ with Stefan Gates who plans to ‘take boring, complicated but vital ideas like hydration and make them fascinating and inspiring for everyone age seven to 70’. Good luck to them!
For more on ‘Wise up to Water’ campaign see the Childrens’ Food Trust site here.
And two more amusing but rather alarming findings from, the survey:
• 52% of the kids thought that pasta was essential to the body’s survival and
• 20% of boys thought that sweets were essential to the body’s survival!!