Lunchbox Theatre believe in promoting a healthy body and a healthy mind in children which is why they offer easy to follow best practices on good nutrition

What is the healthiest drink a child can consume?  Are fizzy or ‘diet’ drinks good for them?  What about fruit juices?  Lunchbox Theatre offer some valuable ideas on the best sources of beverages.

Children can easily drink a lot of juice because it tastes good. However, too much juice can contribute to problems like obesity, and tooth decay.

Fizzy drinks are most definitely not a good drink for a child, or anyone, because they usually have no nutritional value and are full of artificial colourants, chemicals and sugar which can cause diabetes and cancer of the pancreas, prostrate and breasts. They also can cause liver damage and change the protein levels in the brain, which could lead to hyperactivity. They can also make children fat. Are diet sodas a good alternative?

Diet sodas are deliberately made infectiously addictive to make consumers hooked on them like a drug, with some serious side effects.

Marisa Peer rated by Men’s Health as Britain’s Best Therapist, a behavioural psychologist and a world-renowned expert in eating disorders confirms, “It is very common to see overweight clients drink diet coke and then reach for the cake or carbs.  Artificial sweeteners are associated with a drop in the appetite-regulating hormone leptin. Leptin is the hormone that inhibits hunger so diet drinks make you hungry and less satisfied with normal amounts of food.  When you drink a lot of chemicals that your body simply cannot break down, your body makes more and more internal fat to wrap the harmful chemicals to keep them away from your vital organs. Diet coke has no calories and no recognised ingredients.  It is actually a cocktail of chemicals that encourage your body to gain and store weight especially on your legs and bottom away from your organs.’

By contrast … without water, your body would stop working properly. Water makes up more than half of your body weight, and a person can’t survive for more than a few days without it. Your body needs water to do lots of important jobs. For instance, your blood, which contains a lot of water, carries oxygen to all the cells of your body. Without oxygen, those tiny cells would die and your body would stop working.

Water is also in lymph a fluid that is part of your immune system, which helps you fight off illness. You need water to digest your food and get rid of waste, too. Water is needed for digestive juices, urine, poop and it is the main ingredient in perspiration.

Drinking a lot of water is vital and when children drink water is also important. If they’re going to sports practice, a game, working out or playing hard, they need to drink water before, during, and after playing.   We need to conserve water to make sure that we will always have a good source of this vital resource.  Our Last Drop Show illustrates to children why this is important and how to do it.  We helped Hornlee Primary to reduce their water consumption by nearly 50%!

And, of course, it is always important to the environment to dispose of the water container or recycle it in a responsible manner.  The What a Waste Show covers this topic magnificently well.  Please consider staging one of these shows to educate our youth or contributing to getting the message out via the Donate button on www.lunchbox.org.za