The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
Why fructose-laden drinks when there’s a healthy option on tap?
|
When I was a kid, I was able to sit in a classroom for an hour (or even two) without requiring rehydration. Adults were able to go for a walk without toting a drink bottle. And the only reason to carry water in a car was to refill the radiator. When did we become a nation requiring constant hydration? Somehow we have all come to believe that drinking is a core part of being healthy. Kidney Health Australia helped propagate the message that we should all be drinking eight glasses of water a day. And even the official dietary guidelines chimed in to tell us that we should be getting two litres a day. Unsurprisingly, they got plenty of support from water authorities and bottled water manufacturers. Unfortunately, there is no scientific basis whatsoever for such a recommendation. Hydration has nothing to do with kidney health. It turns out that high blood pressure and diabetes are the primary risks to our kidney health. And we’re suffering more than ever before. End stage kidney disease (the bit just before you die) in men increased by 31% between 2000 and 2007 (19% for women). And because you can get by on just 10% kidney function without showing symptoms, most kidney disease goes undiagnosed. But try as they might, Kidney Health Australia is having difficulty stuffing the drink-water-for-kidney-health genie back in the bottle. We love a health message that encourages us to do something we were going to do anyway. We’re even keener to do it if we can convince ourselves it’s cool. OK, we weren’t going to drink two litres of water a day (well, not after the first day). But we pretty quickly convinced ourselves that any drink counted. As long as we were getting the required fluid volume. Big Sugar was more than happy to help us with our self delusion. Coca-Cola, for example, has a special site dedicated to letting us know that “water* plays many important roles in the body”. The asterisk is there to remind us that “it’s not just plain drinking water that contributes to hydration” (just in case you temporarily forgotten they’ve got some sugary stuff to sell to you). But there probably aren’t too many people who believe a bottle of Coke is really health food (with the possible exception of Kerry Armstrong). It’s much more of a problem when this kind of intentional deception sneaks into the marketing of children’s drinks. School canteens don’t sell soft drinks these days. And schools certainly don’t encourage children to sip Pepsi throughout the day. They don’t do it because the various state health authorities have declared soft drinks to be too full of sugar to be safely consumed by children. Instead they sell water. No, not plain old boring tap water. It’s water, but “fun”. Wacky Water and Play Sports Water have the school canteen market sown up. They’re made by P&N Beverages and the lead line from the Wacky Water website sums up its approach to the market. It says “Do you find drinking the amount of water that nutritionists recommend difficult?” Both drinks are targeted firmly at worried parents. They fret that little Hermione and Reginald are dehydrated (and their kidneys are on the verge of packing it in) but they know they have Buckley’s of getting them to drink enough water. Solution: Wacky, Sporty, Water. These waters are sweetened with pure fructose. Somehow this counts as neither added sugar (which it is) nor artificial sweetener (which it also is) by the time it gets onto the Fun, Wacky, Sporty labels of these bottles of (what looks like) pure fresh water (they leave the colouring out for some reason). Education departments are happy that everyone is being healthy. Parents feel less guilty. And kids can’t believe they’re actually being encouraged to drink this stuff. A 500ml bottle of Sports Water delivers 21g of pure fructose to the thirsty child. To get that much fructose from sugar, you’d have to chow down on 10 teaspoons of the white gold. Inconveniently, it seems that all that natural fructose causes chronic kidney disease. So these waters are not exactly having the desired effect. A study released last month confirmed that fructose directly causes high blood pressure. It does this by raising uric acid levels in the blood. High uric acid levels are known to cause kidney disease, as is the high blood pressure itself. Eighty per cent of patients with failed kidneys have high blood pressure. Every day in Australia seven new patients are added to the list of people requiring dialysis or transplantation of failed kidneys and the rate is accelerating. One in 10 deaths are now as a result of kidney disease. What are these numbers going to look like by the time the kids we’re stuffing with fructose wear out their kidneys? Our children will drink water when they are thirsty. So make sure there is water available in the playground. But every day that fructose-laden drinks are sold as water adds more kids to the back of the queue for a new kidney. Fructose is deadly. There is no justification for selling it to our children as health food. It’s time our governments (and those they pay to care) pulled the pin on this disgusting display of corporate greed at the expense of children’s health. |
|
|
15 Comments
So, I’d better stop eating this apple, then?
I blame Elle Macpherson. I am sure it was her that started the whole 7 glasses of water a day for beautiful skin and a healthy glow.
I wonder what the effect is going to be on people’s teeth, particularly young children, with the current fad of buying bottled water (no fluoride). If you think that Coke and Pepsi are the masters of advertising what about the guys that kid you that you need “pure spring water” in a bottle from the super market at what? $2.50 a liter?
The requirement for drinking 8 cups of water a day was always a myth based on a sentence in an old dietary guideline document which was taken out of context. The part about most of the water being in the food we eat was ignored. I’ve lost the original reference, but the myth is discussed here http://www.toolness.com/wp/?p=46
It’s true that we need 8 cups of water a day, but we already get most of it from the water contained in the food we eat. This is only an average and it depends on body mass, perspiration, and intake of salts and other diuretics.
It’s true that the marketing is terrible - this stuff is no water replacement. I’m not really sure whether it will be bought as a water replacement in practice, but that’s another discussion.
If it were marketed as a soft drink, though - which it is - surely it’s better than most, since it has about half as much sugar as most of them do.
I could get behind a lot of what David says if he could just dial down the hysteria.
I suppose he wouldn’t like the following review at all.
http://www.choicefoodforkids.com.au/review/WACKY-WATER-Radical-Raspberry
But on the other hand, what difference does all this make? As far as David is concerned, anything at all containing sugar should be removed from the food supply.
Anyway I digress… no, there is no justification for selling this to kids as health food.
David, if everyone would be an outspoken killjoy like you it would ruin the economy.
People would learn to use whats left of the brain that in their head - you know telling the difference between things n stuff? Outrageous!
How dare you try to wake me and all my other cardboard-cutout, box-fed friends up to the fact that neither government nor the ASX gives so much as a hooty patooty about us????
Keep it up.
If your kids are fat, you might check if some idiot has put fruit juice in the door of your fridge. Throw it out. You don’t have to check the sugar content on the side. Heavens sake, the stuff is machine pulped and filtered, not whole fruit.
Do you kid yourself that it’s good for the kid to swig fruit juice when s/he gets the urge because it contains a mysterious essential natural goodness, of which everybody needs a unknown daily dose? Face it, the number of pieces of fruit in a single guzzle amounts to an overdose of pretty well everything in it.
Vitamins? Try the whole fruit. Go further. When your fat kid wants to know where his dessert is, dump a whole orange in front of him instead.
Question: I like caramelized fruit desserts like apple pie. Is that bad? (I’m not being facetious.)
“People would learn to use whats left of the brain that in their head”
Absolutely. The world would be a better place if people read things critically rather than blindly accepting stuff being marketed at them, don’t you think?
The most common diuretic drinks, tea & coffee,have a serious & pernicious effect on the post middle aged who, in general, are less active (sweat less) and more likely to need hydration.
Combined with sugar, a cuppa actually leaves one in water deficit so people have another, and another…
@AR: the solution to tea and coffee then, is to drink them black no sugar. It may make you drink more, but too much coffee is not enough! :^) (good cafes will supply a bottle of plain water with an espresso)
@James: The apple pie is ok, but maybe you should leave the pastry, and cook the apple without sugar. IMO, you would call that dish stewed apple, not apple pie…
David Gillespie is right on this one. We all survived pretty well without constantly sipping on water. The whole industry-fuelled ‘hydration’ thing is designed to sell us their products. The ‘fluids’ industry take data from endurance athletes, who may need to drink more than they think they need during a long hard high-sweat effort and then apply it to everyone else. With the exception of the frail aged, humans drink water when they need it. This includes children. Most foods are quite high in water - even meat is 60% water and most fruits and vegetables are 85-92% water. AR’s comment about tea and coffee having “serious and pernicious” diuretic effects is also a bit silly. Tea and coffee do have a mild diuretic effect but when you drink a cup of tea, you don’t lose more than a cup of liquid in urine as is mistakenly assumed. In any case, one of the purposes of fluid is to encourage fluid flow through the kidneys.
There is no excuse for schools to sell this junk.
Rosemary Stanton
Umm not sure if I should add this or not. Until recently I couldn’t distinguish between hunger and thirst. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether I was hungry or thirsty. I can now thanks to the Nutritionist I am seeing.
So I’m not sure us modern cubicle farm humans *do* drink water they need it. Also have I also been suckered in by my rugby coach who use to say ‘By the time you are thirsty it’s already too late ! You’re dehydrated’. Believe me I would never consider my self an ‘athlete’ little alone with the ‘elite’ prefix.
Also is the fructose / sucrose chemical distinction (yeah same but chemically different) the reason they get away with not calling it ‘sugar’?
I’m not sure about the anti-water idea. If you drink water[1] with your food, you’ll end up eating less, which is often a good thing. Makes your ‘I’m full’ reflex kick in sooner?
[1] just water, not water ‘drink’