Kids Need More Water

It's free, readily available, but something most of us don't use as much as we should. We're talking about plain old water. There is one group that needs to drink more H2O.

It's the kids. They aren't drinking as much water as they need too and that can have some long term consequences.

A new study, just published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found that only up to 60 percent of boys and just over half of girls aged 2 to 19 drank the minimum amount of water that was recommended by the US Institute of Medicine. Researchers found that instead, children are obtaining much of their needed water intake from sweetened beverages. That means they are also taking in more calories during the day they don't need---which helps contribute to the ongoing obesity epidemic.

We can't live without water, but the secret is to make sure all of us, but especially our children, are drinking plain old water instead of other drinks during the day. One way to do this is to get rid of other sweetened drinks in the house---and I'm not just talking about sodas, but any kind of sweetened beverage, even sweetened juices. The goal is to get them back on a "water to quench my thirst" habit and away from the countless sodas they tend to drink.