‘Water Jets’ May Stem Tide of Student Obesity

In schools with so-called water jets, which chill and oxygenate the water, the odds of boys being overweight were 0.9 percent less than among boys in schools without water jets.

We find small, but statistically significant, decreases in weight for students in schools with water jets compared to students in schools without water jets.

Researchers from New York University School of Medicine have noticed that water can act as a healthy alternative to sugar-sweetened beverages, which many children prefer to have hence increasing their chance of getting obese.

The authors of the study concluded that easy access to water during lunch may lead kids to substitute it for less-healthy beverages like chocolate milk, juice and soda.

Water dispenser availability in schools has been associated with a small yet significant decline in mean body mass index among students, unveils a large “quasi-experimental” study of New York City schools. This shift alone suggests that making water jets readily available could help weight management strategies. “While no single policy or intervention will by itself fix childhood obesity, (installing water dispensers) could be one of a number of policies that added together could have a real impact”. The study, led by a research team from the NYU Langone Medical Center in collaboration with The NYU Institute for Education and Social Policy as well as the Center for Policy Research – Syracuse University reported the findings of the analysis conducted on 1,227 students. These are no fountains of horror so often found in city schools, encrusted in rust or crud, or serving warm, metallic-tasting water that barely forms an arch leaving the dispenser. There were more than one million students in these schools. At the same time, milk purchases dropped by about 12 half-pint cartons per student per year.

Because the water jets were introduced after the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene removed sugary beverages from vending machines, Elbel says that the effect of the water on BMI is unlikely to be due just to the kids drinking fewer sweetened drinks. The machines cost about $1,000 and about 40 per cent of the city’s schools received a water jet between 2009 and 2013.

Childhood obesity peaks its statistics in the U.S. Hence, the numbers of children that are obese are twice the number of adults that suffer from the same situation according to Medical News Today.

Turns out, after just three months, the scientists documented a difference: students who had water machines in their cafeterias saw a reduction in BMI.

Some fundamentally yet simple principles have been proven by these findings. “First, water is usually the best choice for any of us when thirsty”, he said. Replacing them instead are self-serving water jets that allowed the easy access to water during lunch. “[But] even fairly low costs of water dispensers may pose a barrier to implementation and sustained access to water in schools, particularly given the many worthy and competing demands for limited budgetary resources in many educational agencies”.

“Third, we sometimes do have to build the obvious solution to get people to come to it”, Katz explained.