Take a step back and ask yourself what various kinds of beverages you are drinking over the last few days. Don’t be surprised if you find a large quantity of sugar-sweetened drinks as part of your intake.
These high-calorie beverages are such a regular part of day to day life that we think of them as entirely benign. Things like soda, flavored drink, coffee, tea, energy drink all add up as a significant source of added sugar driven calories. Ultimately they become the most significant contributor to bad health like chronic diseases related to obesity, diabetes type -2, and cardiovascular diseases.
On the other hand, water is a thirst-quenching beverage with an added advantage of zero calories. Thirst is quenched with water at regular intervals can help one stay away from high-calorie sugary drinks. A strategy of making water easily accessible at all times of our daily life events can assist in improving overall health and save expenses occurring due to chronic diseases apart from providing a quality life.
- Buy a water bottle and keep it with you always filled with water. Sipping water as and when you feel like.
- Workplaces can ensure water fountains/coolers are easily accessible within a few meters and employees are encouraged to take water breaks (better than tea breaks and also give the added advantage of getting off your seat and walking to get water)
- Put drinking water sources next to areas where people visit a few times during the day. Like next to coffee machines, restrooms in public or private institutions. (Ensure fountains/coolers allow enough space for a bottle to be filled easily)
- Availability of easily accessible free drinking water is an incentive for our brains (economic aspects too) to quench the thirst whenever it is available
