WINNIPEG – It’s not easy for kids to give up their favourite things. And convincing them to cut sweet, fizzy soda out of their diets would seem like a tough sell.
But at one Winnipeg school, students are bring taught to ‘drop the pop.’ It’s a program sponsored by the Kidney Foundation of Canada to encourage kids to avoid sugary drinks.
“I don’t think I’ll be touching pop for a while,” says Mulvey school student Dakota Wall. He’s one of a group of elementary students helping make lemonade that will be handed out to the rest of the school.
They’re squeezing real lemons and using honey as a sweetener. It’s part of a week long project to show the students they can get by without sugar, particularly in drinks like pop that contain about 40 grams of sugar in one 355 ml can. That’s roughly equal to ten of the sugar packets used to sweeten coffee or tea.
“It’s important to teach your children that too much sugar is not good for your body, it can lead to a lot of things that we don’t want, like obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, tooth decay,” says Melanie Ferris of the Kidney Foundation of Canada. It’s giving four Manitoba schools $250 each to run a ‘drop the pop’ program like the one at Mulvey.
Manitoba has the highest rate of diabetes in Canada, especially among aboriginal people. At Mulvey school, about 70 per cent of the students have an aboriginal background. And the ‘drop the pop’ message is resonating with students, who have been enjoying alternatives to soda from plain old water, to blueberry iced tea, to smoothies. And Wednesday’s lemonade.
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“It’s a great experience to make homemade stuff. Try it out, rather than buying pop and being unhealthy,” says Dakota.
It’s a good start, but teachers know it will take a lot more to wean kids off sugary drinks.
“Pop is such a treat. They’re gonna go for, they always want to choose that, so just putting out other options for things they can also choose, but that still tastes good and is still exciting to drink is important for them,” says Mulvey teacher Carrie Vandergraaf.
The Kidney Foundation says it’s seeking more corporate and fundraising support to be able to extend its ‘drop the pop’ program to more Manitoba schools.
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