Drinks
Your body needs fluids to keep it hydrated. This means drinking around 6-8 glasses, cups or mugs of fluid each day - more if it’s hot or you’re very active. Drinking plenty helps you to concentrate, and can help you keep your bowels regular. When you’re thirsty your brain's ability to work properly can be cut by as much as 10%!
What Counts?
Water, fruit smoothies, pure fruit juice, sugar-free squash and fizzy drinks, sugar-free flavoured waters, low-fat and flavoured milks. Or try tea (regular or fruit), coffee, low-fat hot chocolate or malted drinks if you want something hot.
Are You Dehydrated?
You can check out whether you are dehydrated or not just by checking the colour of your urine when you go to the toilet. The darker the colour the more dehydrated you are. Just being dehydrated by 2% can lead to a reduction in sporting performance and concentration.
Find out more about why you should carry a water bottle at school by visiting www.wateriscoolinschool.org.uk/learning.html.
Alcohol
If you drink it’s important to choose wisely. Regular drinking, even in small amounts can contribute to weight gain. Avoid excess alcohol and binge drinking as this can seriously affect your health.
Men shouldn’t drink more that 3-4 units a day.
Women shouldn’t drink more than 2-3 units a day.
Remember the legal drinking age in the UK and ROI is 18.
What is a unit?
A unit is:
- An old 125 ml pub measure of wine - 9% ABV (alcohol by volume) but many wines are 11 or 12% ABV and glasses are usually larger. A typical 175ml glass usually works out as 2 units.
- Just over ½ a bottle of lager – a full 330 ml bottle at 5% ABV can be about 1.7 units.
- Just over ½ a 330 ml bottle of an alcopop (5% ABV) a full bottle is 1.7 units.
- A 25 ml pub measure of spirits (40% ABV).
- A half pint of ordinary strength beer (3.5 ABV).
Don't be fooled - lots of drinks have higher ABVs than standard examples. And if you are pouring your own drink you are likely to get more in the glass than a normal pub measure.
If you want to, you can work out how many units there are in a drink by using the following calculation:
To work out how many units there are in bottle/can of drink: Multiply the %ABV by the amount of the drink in millilitres. Then divide by 1000.
Did you know?
Weight for weight alcohol provides more energy (calories) than the same amount of sugar.
Fact
- Young people get drunk on less alcohol than adults do.
- If you’re an inexperienced drinker it takes less alcohol to get seriously ill.
- Alcohol is a kind of poison or toxin.
