The healthy message that drinking water is good for you has gradually been seeping through, however soda drink sales don't appear to have dropped significantly as a consequence. Parents can help children make healthy decisions by providing bottled water instead of sugar filled soda drinks when they're at school, on a long car journey or anywhere where your kids are going to need rehydration. Why water is good for you You don't need an advert showing a person crawling across the desert to know that your body needs water otherwise it won't function properly. With water making up more than 50% of your body weight you wouldn't be able to survive for more than a few days without it. Water doesn't just rehydrate you, it also performs a number of significant functions. Your blood, which holds water, carries oxygen to cells around your body. Your body would stop working if the cells died because of a lack of oxygen. You will also find lots of water in the lymph fluid which forms part of your immune system, designed to help you fight off any illnesses. Water helps you digest food on the way in and helps waste on the way out. Sweating, which is an important part of your body's life cycle, is mostly made up of water, but we call it perspiration. Fortunately, you won't receive your entire water intake just by drinking water. Many fluids that you digest will contain water. Milk contains a lot of water and even fruit contains a little. Most vegetables are full of water, fresh or cooked. Encouraging children to drink bottle water Packing bottled water for your children will help ensure that they can turn to water as soon as they feel that they need a drink. This means that not only is the water easily available, but your children don't have to go searching for taps, particularly in bathrooms, where the water may not be drinkable, but may include impurities because it has been collected, perhaps, from rainwater and is circulated around bathrooms in out of date plumbing. Many children prefer to drink bottled water, in preference to tap water, because most tap water that is safe to drink has a metallic, chlorine taste, which is sometimes considered not as nice as some bottled waters. Bottled water, in this instance, may mean that your children drink more water during the day. Some people will argue that fluoride is missing from bottled water, but sufficient can be obtained from other sources. If children are trained to clean their teeth twice a day they will get sufficient fluoride for their bodily systems. Many would even argue fluoride-free is better! Bottled water doesn't have to be an expensive item and can quite easily cost less than the latest sugary soda drink. And there’s one more benefit: where parents are able to teach their children to drink bottled water consistently, they are setting a pattern that will hopefully pass on successfully to the next generation and beyond. Consistently drinking sugar and soda drinks will reduce the high levels of obesity found in teenagers today. As the UK’s No. 1 plumbed-in water cooler supplier, Eden Springs is happy to meet your water needs, whatever your age! Image: Julien Harneis/Flickr
