THUNDER BAY – Almost half the sugar youth take in every day comes from their drinking habbits.
That fact has led Healthy Kids Community Challenge to launch a campaign promoting water as the best beverage choice for keeping children healthy.
Thunder Bay is one of 45 cities across Ontario taking part in the Healthy Kids Community Challenge, which is designed to unite communities with a common goal of improving children’s health.
The Healthy Kids Community Challenge is encouraging families to drink more water by launching a new Water Does Wonders campaign to promote healthy kids.
Healthy Kids Community Challenge coordinator Marianne Stewart said it’s common to see sugary beverages often replace healthier choices such as nutritious drinks, vegetables, fruits and milk.
“We all know that kids are consuming a lot of sugar these days,” Stewart said during Tuesday’s healthy kid’s event at the Da Vinci Centre.
“What we want to do is encourage kids to drink water. We want to change the school environment and the home environment, so water is the first and best choice.”
About 44 per cent of the sugar youth consume comes from beverages, and these drinks are the single largest source of sugar in kid’s diets.
From ages four to 18, almost 20 per cent of the calories Canadian youth consume comes from beverages, and for younger children that number makes up almost 30 per cent.
“An easy way to swap out sugary drinks is to encourage kids to drink water,” Stewart said.
More than 30 individuals took part in various exercises Tuesday geared toward water consumption.
The first exercise was designed to show the barriers some people might have to access services and good health.
For the rest of the morning they identified those barriers and talked about how to work around them to service all the populations in the community.
Healthy Kids Community Challenge champion Frank Pullia said it’s important to encourage kids to be healthy, because once habits are formed it’s difficult to change.
“We are promoting health living for kids,” Pullia said. “We want our kids to be healthy and to start early at learning to be healthy by drinking water.”
He added that it’s important to give them choices especially at a young age, so children grow up thinking about a healthy living.
Pullia said at the end of the day you can’t influence the kids without having the parents and the community involved in those choices.
