Washington - My daughter has her first crush.
It isn’t any of the boys in her nursery school (she just turned four). Instead, she has a massive fascination with juice. She used to ask for water every time she felt thirsty, but I guess she has sipped enough juice to recognise that it tastes pretty good. But I don’t want her to replace her daily intake of water with juice.
It is recommended that kids consume no more than 12 grams of added sugar a day. One cup of apple juice has 24 grams of sugar in it, twice the amount. Unlike whole fruit, juice lacks fibre, quickly releasing sugar into the bloodstream, causing a blood sugar rise and a resulting drop. Not an ideal scenario for a child’s mood, energy level, blood sugar or pancreas.
Coinciding with my daughter’s interest in juice, my boys are indignant that many of their friends drink fizzy cooldrink on a regular basis. Sorry, boys – not going to happen. Our bodies need water. Plain, been-around-for-billions-of-years, unsweetened, unflavoured, crystal-clear water.
Next to air, water is the most essential element to our survival. It is necessary for the proper function of every single cell in the body, and it makes up more than two-thirds of the body’s weight.
“A mere two percent drop in the body’s water supply can trigger signs of dehydration such as fuzzy memory, daytime fatigue, trouble with maths and difficulty focusing on small print,” Raymond Schep writes in his book Eat Right for Life. These are side effects we do not want our kids to experience during a school day.
Visualise a plum and a prune. Which one would you prefer your cells to resemble? Undoubtedly the plum; it looks healthier. When we become dehydrated, our cells shrink like a prune, making our brains and bodies sluggish, doctor and researcher Fereydoon Batmanghelidj writes in Your Body’s Many Cries for Water.
No wonder we can develop headaches, muscle cramps and foggy brains. Try a glass or two of water instead of a pill for that next headache; it might be all you need.
Imagine how much slower blood travels to the organs and cells when it is thicker. Your heart has to work harder, while oxygen and other essential nutrients arrive more slowly. This leaves you fatigued.
Water protects the spinal cord and lubricates the joints. It also ensures that waste products move in and out of cells, and ultimately out of the body through sweat (which also regulates body temperature) and urine. Without adequate hydration, the colon pulls water from stools, resulting in a back-up of waste and constipation.
Water also helps to digest food by making saliva, moistening the digestive tract, and facilitating the absorption of nutrients into the cells.
In other words, when we are hydrated, we gain more nutrition from the foods we eat.
Some ideas for your children:
* Send them to school with a water bottle.
* Send them to every sports game and practice with a water bottle instead of a sports drink.
* Give them a colourful straw; kids seem to enjoy drinking with one. Perhaps the straw will help to increase their water intake.
* Encourage them to drink water when they wake up in the morning.
* When they feel tired during the day, suggest they drink a glass of water before anything else.
* Serve them lots of whole foods. They should be getting about 20 percent of their body fluid intake from fruit, vegetables and wholesome soups.
* Let them make their own special drink by adding berries, a squeeze of lemon or lime, a sliver of orange, a watermelon cube, cucumber slices, a sprig of mint or whatever fresh fruit, vegetable or herb will entice them to drink more water.
Washington Post
Seidenberg is co-founder of Nourish Schools, a Washington-based nutrition education company.