Heartbeat: Paul leads the charge on Fizz-Free February

February 7, 2019

Our Deputy Chief Nurse is spearheading our involvement in Fizz Free February – a campaign to get young people to reduce or cut out their intake of fizzy drinks, many of which have extremely high sugar content.

The campaign is being run by a number of local authorities across the country, including Sandwell, and has the full support of local MP Tom Watson who lost a dramatic amount of weight in 2018.

Paul said: “I have committed our support to this vital campaign and throughout the month, I will be working alongside our children’s services to get this important message out to school-aged young people.

I was privileged to meet Tom Watson recently who talked about his very inspirational health journey. We may not realise it, but fizzy drinks make up an average of 29 per cent of daily sugar intake. If you drink a can of coke every day for a month you will eat the equivalent of a bag of sugar. Fizzy drinks are also the largest single source of sugar for children aged eleven to eighteen. So if we’re going to get serious about childhood obesity, it starts with fizzy pop.”

The hard truth about soft drinks:

• You can save £438 a year if you stopped drinking one bottle of soft drink, per day for a year
• Drinking just one 330ml can of fizzy drink a day could add up to over a stone weight gain per year
• 79 per cent of fizzy drinks contain 6 or more teaspoons of sugar per can (330ml)

Tooth decay is the leading cause for hospitalisation among 5-9 year olds in the UK, with 26,000 children being hospitalised each year due to tooth decay – in other words, 500 each week.