Britain is failing the defining public health challenge of our generation. One in five children now leave primary school with obesity. The NHS spends more than £11bn a year dealing with the consequences. Life expectancy has stalled and, in some of Britain’s poorest communities, is now going backwards.
Yet amid all the debate about calories, ultra-processed food and weight-loss drugs, there is one extraordinary blind spot in our national conversation: healthy hydration.
We’ve spent decades obsessing over what Britain eats. We’ve paid remarkably little attention to what Britain drinks.
At the Natural Source Waters Association, we have just published research that ministers cannot afford to ignore. More than 40% of young adults think that if they eat well, it doesn’t matter what they drink. One in six young adults believe an energy drink is a healthy choice.
If that doesn’t expose a failure of public health messaging, it’s hard to know what would.
Public confusion on this scale doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the symptom of years of inconsistent and absent messaging about one of the most basic aspects of health. Water makes up around 60% of the human body and almost three-quarters of the brain. Yet one of the most fundamental requirements for good health barely features in our public health debate.
This isn’t about demonising other drinks. Consumers expect choice and the drinks industry has responded with remarkable innovation in recent years. But if many people genuinely believe an energy drink is a healthy option, something has gone badly wrong.
The government has focused relentlessly on what we eat while treating the calories we drink as an afterthought, despite them accounting for up to a fifth of our daily intake. It is time for change.
Making water part of public health policy
That’s why we’ve published a Healthy Hydration Manifesto. If government is serious about prevention, then drinking water must become a mainstream pillar of public health policy. That means stronger NHS guidance on hydration and renewed public awareness campaigns (our research shows two-thirds of Britons want clearer guidance on hydration).
Renaming the National Food Strategy as the National Food & Drink Strategy would be a start. That might sound small, but words matter and their absence often explains inaction.
Ministers’ stated healthcare mission is to shift from treatment to prevention. A water-first policy for hydration is prevention in its simplest form. It doesn’t involve new medicines, expensive interventions nor complex behavioural science. It is simply about ensuring people understand that water is the healthiest way to hydrate.
However, this is not government’s responsibility alone.
Retailers have done more than any institution to reshape consumer behaviour over the past decade. Healthier ranges are expanding, nutritional information is clearer and there is increasing innovation across low and no-sugar products.
If government sets the direction, retailers have an unrivalled ability to turn policy into action. No other part of the food system influences millions of daily purchasing decisions in quite the same way. This isn’t just about commercial power; it’s about public health leadership.
Yet a question still remains: are we making the healthiest choice visible enough in store? If the answer is no, there is more to do.
The government’s new 10-Year Health Plan talks about launching a “moonshot to end the obesity epidemic”. It is exactly the sort of ambition this country needs. But every moonshot depends on getting the engineering right. Ignore healthy hydration and this will fail, Britain will become sicker and our NHS risks buckling under intolerable pressures.
Moonshots don’t fail through a lack of ambition. They fail because someone decided a vital component wasn’t important enough.
James Withers is chair of the Natural Source Waters Association
No comments yet