Can Simply Providing Water to Students Affect Their Weight?

The removal of sugar-sweetened beverages, such as soda, juice, and energy drinks, from schools has become a popular way to combat the child obesity epidemic in the U.S. A complementary strategy — making water more easily available and attractive as a school lunch drink option — was evaluated in a quasi-experimental study of roughly 1.1 million elementary and middle school students in New York City.

The study involved 483 public schools that installed “water jets” (large, fast-dispensing, electrically-cooled, water jugs costing about $1000 each) in cafeterias from 2008 to 2013 and 744 schools that did not. Standardized body-mass index (zBMI), overweight, and obesity were compared before and after installation of water jets between students at…