Rethink Your Drink
Do you know how much sugar is in your drink? A Rethink Your Drink campaign is a great way to teach kids about the amount of sugar that can be found in commonly consumed beverages, as well as their impact on health. Encouraging kids to rethink their drink challenges them to make healthy beverage choices and consume more water.
Tips to Take Action:
- Host a hidden sugars demonstration to provide a visual representation of the amount of sugar in popular sweetened beverages using sugar cubes, sugar packets or teaspoons of sugar.
- Use a stoplight image to teach kids about drinks they should drink rarely (red), occasionally (yellow), and plenty (green).
- Teach students to read the ingredients on food labels to identify common high-calorie sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup, fruit juice concentrates, dextrose, fructose and sucrose.
- Allow students to bring a water bottle to class to stay hydrate throughout the day.
- Host a taste test with water infused with lemons, limes, berries, cucumbers, mint leaves or other natural flavors.
- Post educational signs near the staff lounge, main office, cafeteria and vending machines to help students, staff and visitors identify the healthiest beverage options.
- Install a water bottle filling station at your school to offer free, cold, filtered water to students and staff.
- Explain the importance of water to students. Adjust your explanation based on the age of the student. Here’s some basic information:
- Water is an essential nutrient for life—we can’t live without it!
- Water represents about two-thirds of our body weight.
- Water is part of every living cell, and it’s a medium for all metabolic changes (digestion, absorption and excretion), as it helps transport nutrients.
Hydration
It’s no secret that tempting and tasty beverages are everywhere. It’s easy to forget the importance of water for overall health and a well-balanced diet. Staying hydrated helps kids stay alert and focused, can keep their bodies at a safe and healthy temperature, and may improve cognitive functioning. School-aged kids should be drinking at least six to eight glasses of water each day. One of the easiest ways of ensuring kids, school staff and families drink more water is to make water more accessible and fun throughout the day.
Tips to Take Action:
- Ensure clean, maintained water fountains are available throughout the school.
- Sell water bottles branded with your school logo. It supports healthy fundraising and access to water!
- Encourage teachers to allow water bottles in the classroom, or allow students to go to the water fountain as needed during class.
- Educate staff: Consuming water supports their students’ immune systems and may lessen headaches, sleepiness and stomach aches which ultimately helps students be present and ready to learn.
- Work with your food service department to swap out sodas and other sugar-sweetened beverages available in vending machines or in the cafeteria and replace them with regular water, flavored waters and sparkling water (learn what is allowable in schools).
- Start a Rethink Your Drink campaign to educate students on the importance of water and the amount of sugar in sweetened beverages.
- Host a taste test of infused waters – see below for some of Action for Healthy Kids’ favorite flavor combinations! For an extra challenge, make it a blind taste test to see if students can pick out what is in the water.
- Mix plain seltzer water with a little 100% fruit juice for a refreshing and bubbly treat
- Infuse a pitcher of plain water with these combinations (or let students get creative!):
- Blueberry & Lemon
- Strawberry & Basil
- Watermelon & Mint
- Pineapple & Jalapeno
- Peach & Berries
- Apple & Cinnamon Sticks
- Orange & Cucumber
- Teach the importance of water in health education class. Adjust your explanation based on the age of the student. Here’s some basic information:
- Water is an essential nutrient for life—we can’t live without it!
- Water represents about two-thirds of our body weight.
- Water is part of every living cell, and it’s a medium for all metabolic changes (digestion, absorption and excretion), as it helps transport nutrients.
- Invite parents to take a community pledge to swap out 1-for-1 by replacing one sugar-sweetened drink with water each day.
Does your school have a wellness policy in place regarding access to water? If not, click here to view the CDC’s toolkit on increasing access to drinking water in schools.