School Campaign

What our children eat at school has been a hot topic in the recent media with Jamie Oliver doing his best to highlight the poor state of our children's diet at school. This raises the question of what our children are drinking throughout the school day and whether their fluid intake is enough.

Very few schools (roughly a 3rd) permit children to drink water in class and few encourage it. This means that during the course of an average school day (6 ½ hours) water consumption is restricted to break and lunch time, roughly 1 hour a day, and available facilities are poor. Most schools still have old water fountains situated in toilets, hardly inviting to children, while staff rooms and offices that parents work in most probably contain chilled water coolers.

This is even more shocking when taken into consideration that a 5th of secondary schools who took part in the survey did not offer water with their lunch. It seems that even though schools teach the importance of water for sustaining life and for learning (they encourage fluid intake during exams) this is not a message that is conveyed throughout the normal school day.

Lack of drinking water affects the learning ability and general health of children. Some of the health problems associated with dehydration in children include:

Restlessness
Poor behaviour
Irritability
Lack of concentration
Headaches
Kidney scarring (which could cause complications in later life).

The bladder is a muscular organ that, through regular fluid consumption, increases its capability to store liquid. It has been suggested that lack of water throughout the day means young children have a low bladder capacity because their bladder is not being trained to hold increasing amounts of urine. Their bladder is then overloaded in the evenings when drinks are readily available, and this contributes to bedwetting (nocturnal enuresis).

Water Campaign Aims

Some common problems children encounter include:

School policy prevents drinking in class
Facilities are dated - fountains are situated in toilets
Children would rather drink fizzy drinks than water.

By raising awareness of the importance of a good water intake as well as a healthy diet the aim is to:

Highlight the issue to parents & schools
Encourage children to drink more water throughout the day
Improve accessibility to water through new water coolers & bottles
Raise awareness to ensure that access to water is legislated.

For more information on the effects of lack of water in children please visit:

www.kidneyresearch.org