In the great article by Kristina Chew we learn how some principled athletes are helping their fans wake up to the fact that water is so very important and how we should shun caffeine laden, sugar filled, health depleting beverages for this oh so natural, body essential fluid. Read it below!
Sports drinks, soda (diet and not, caffeinated and not), iced tea (diet and not), juice, juice drinks, pure spring water, mineral water, vitamin water: It’s fair to say there are so many things to drink that one forgets the most basic drink of them all:
Water.
Two professional snowboarders, Bryan Fox and Austin Smith, have started a campaign with the to-the-point name Drink Water to encourage people to do just that. Drinking good old-fashioned, plane Jane water is, better, writes Christopher Mims on Grist, than gulping down “$20-a-gallon sugar-juice” — that is, sports drinks that contain “caffeine, sodium, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and even some mystery chemicals about which little is known,” says the Drink Water site. Both Fox and Smith are sponsored by sports drinks companies so their campaign is all the more notable (though perhaps they might nudge those sponsors in the direction of cutting down on some of the “mystery chemicals” and such in their products?).
To fuel their campaign, the Drink Water website does sell logo-branded gear. 10 percent of every purchase will go to Water.org, whose mission is to provide people in the developing world with drinking water. Some facts from Water.org:
* 3.575 million people die every year from a water-related disease according to a World Health Organization report from 2008
* “An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day,” the 2006 United Nations Human Development Report points out
* Approximately 1 in 8 people lack access to a safe supply of water
Lest you’re concerned about drinking water straight from the tap, Mims writes that the environmental impact of drinking such water is actually “miniscule” when compared to the amount of “energy and resources required to package and transport the average sports drink, not to mention all the industrial ag that went into making the high fructose corn syrup it contains.”
So many of us take water, and certainly what comes out of the tap, for granted. The Drink Water campaign is a reminder that the very best drink is as close as the kitchen sink, or should be. At a time when fracking has been going on in more and more locales, we need to do everything we can to ensure that our drinking water is safe. The Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) was envisioned as ensuring the quality of drinking water in the US. With research studies linking fracking to flammable drinking water and the contamination of drinking water in the Marcellus Shale, Wyoming and elsewhere, we need to make sure that our drinking water is indeed safe to drink because, in the words of the ancient Greek poet Pindar, “water is best.”
Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/why-you-should-drink-water.html#ixzz1j4D5msEg