Currently browsing posts about: Water

I promised to post some of the responses to the New York City Health Department’s new campaign against sugary drinks.  Here’s what the New York Times has to say.  Still reeling from the American Heart Association’s recommendation to reduce sugars from soft drinks (see previous post), the Beverage Association has issued this statement:

The messages being spread about beverages by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene are so over the top that they are counterproductive to serious efforts to address a complex issue such as obesity. Like most foods, soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are a source of calories. Simply naming one food source as a unique contributor minimizes a disease as complex as obesity. The key to energy balance and maintaining a healthy weight is counting calories in and calories out, not focusing on specific foods or abstaining from any one food or beverage in particular. While we support the campaign’s desire to help people lead healthier lives, we do not believe the campaign imagery represents a serious effort to address a complex issue such as obesity…Further, the beverage industry provides an array of beverages with a wide range of calories, including zero calories…all of which can be part of a balanced lifestyle [my emphasis].

Yes!  Drink water!  Preferably out of a tap!

I’m getting caught up on my journal reading and have just run across the May 16-22 issue of The Lancet devoted to a commission report on climate change.  The cover quote: “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.”

Among other things, the report addresses the effects of climate change on food production and water availability, none of them good.  It raises issues well worth discussion:

The present structure, organisation, and control fo the globalised food and agricultural system are failing to address the needs of both poor people and the environment.  For example, profits of giant agricultural and food corporations increased greatly in 2008, when the number of hungry people grew.

The report is well referenced and is a great resource for information about what climate change will do to food and agriculture.  But the report does not deal with the ways in which agriculture contributes to climate change.  For that angle, see previous posts.

I can hardly believe it but just having drinking fountains in schools (and no sugary drinks) seems to be enough to reduce the risk of obesity in kids by 31%.  This astonishing result is reported in the latest issue of Pediatrics. Investigators arranged to have drinking fountains installed in about half of 32 elementary schools in “socially deprived” areas of Germany.  They also prepared lesson plans encouraging water consumption.  Kids in the intervention schools drank more water and reported consuming less juice.

Could we try this here?  The barriers are formidible.  First, the water fountain problem.  Water fountains must (a) be present, (b) be usable, (c) be clean and sanitary, and (d) produce water that is free of harmful chemicals and bacteria.  All of these are problematic.  I once tried to find out whether the water in school drinking fountains in New York City had been tested and was known to be safe to drink.  I had to file a FOIA (freedom of information act) request to get testing data.  This came from only a few schools and from water going into the fountains, not coming out of them.

And then there is the soda problem.  Schools in Germany do not have vending machines all over the place and kids do not have access to sodas, juice drinks, and other such things all day long.  Ours do.

But doesn’t this study suggest that if we got rid of vending machines and junk foods in schools – and made sure water fountains worked, were clean, and distributed clean water – that we could make a little progress on preventing childhood obesity?  Worth a try, no?