The early health win awaiting a new Prime Minister on a mission

By James Withers, Chair, Natural Source Waters Association

Britain is failing the defining public health challenge of our generation. Yet, the arrival of Andy Burnham into Number 10 brings fresh hope.

The new Prime Minister has spent much of his political career arguing that Britain will never build a sustainable NHS by treating illness alone; prevention is key. He’s right – and he has an early win available to him which, crucially, costs almost nothing.

If the new Prime Minister is looking for an early, practical, affordable and proven public health win, he should start with one of the simplest interventions available: helping Britain understand that dietary health isn’t just about what we eat, but about what we drink too.

That may sound modest compared to the scale of the challenges facing a creaking NHS, but prevention succeeds by getting the fundamentals right. And one of the most fundamental aspects of good health – hydration – has become a glaring blind spot in national policy.

The scale of the problem is immense. One in five children now leave primary school living with obesity. The NHS spends more than £11 billion every year dealing with obesity and its consequences. Life expectancy has stalled and, in some of Britain’s most deprived communities, is going backwards.

These are exactly the inequalities Andy Burnham has spent years arguing should be at the centre of public policy.

As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he made prevention, tackling health inequalities and improving the wider determinants of health central to his approach. Through initiatives such as Live Well, he championed the idea that better health is built in communities, schools and workplaces long before people arrive at a hospital ward.

Now, as Prime Minister, he has the opportunity to put that philosophy at the heart of national policy.

Amid all the debate about health and decades spent obsessing over what Britain eats, we’ve paid remarkably little attention to what Britain drinks.

At the Natural Source Waters Association, we’ve just published research that should act as a wake-up call for Ministers.

• More than 40 per cent of young adults believe that if they eat healthily, it doesn’t matter what they drink.
• Nearly one in five 25 to 34-year-olds believe an energy drink is a healthy choice.
• More than one in ten young adults say they drink no plain water at all.

If that doesn’t expose a failure of public health messaging, it’s hard to know what would.

Public confusion on this scale doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the result of years of inconsistent and often absent messaging about one of the most basic aspects of health. Water makes up around 60 per cent of the human body and almost three quarters of the brain, yet hydration barely features in our national prevention strategy.

This matters because prevention and health inequalities go hand in hand.

The communities experiencing the poorest health outcomes are also those carrying the greatest burden of preventable illness. If the Government wants to narrow those inequalities, it must ensure everyone has the knowledge and confidence to make healthier choices. When millions of people remain confused about something as fundamental as healthy hydration, prevention is already starting from the wrong place.

This isn’t about demonising other drinks. Consumers rightly expect choice, and the drinks industry has responded with remarkable innovation in recent years, with retailers and manufacturers expanding healthier options and providing clearer nutritional information.

But innovation cannot replace public health leadership.

The Government has focused relentlessly on what we eat while treating what we drink as an afterthought, despite drinks accounting for up to a fifth of our daily calorie intake.

That is why we’ve published our Healthy Hydration Manifesto.

If the Government is serious about prevention, drinking water must become a mainstream pillar of public health policy. That means stronger NHS guidance on hydration, renewed public awareness campaigns and a more joined-up approach to encouraging healthier drink choices.

The first step should be straight forward.

The forthcoming National Food Strategy should become the National Food and Drink Strategy.

That might sound like a small change, but words matter. Their absence often results in neglect and inaction. Recognising drinks alongside food would send an important signal that healthy hydration is no longer an afterthought but an integral part of improving the nation’s health.

Retailers also have a crucial role to play. Few organisations influence more daily purchasing decisions than supermarkets and convenience retailers. If the Government sets a clearer direction on healthy hydration, retailers are uniquely placed to reinforce those messages through product placement, healthier ranges and clearer consumer information. Public health works best when government, industry and retailers pull in the same direction.

The Government’s new 10-Year Health Plan talks about launching a “moonshot to end the obesity epidemic”. It is exactly the sort of ambition this country needs.

But every moonshot depends on getting the engineering right.

Ignore healthy hydration and Britain will become sicker, health inequalities will persist and our NHS risks buckling under the costs of treating entirely preventable illness.

Andy Burnham has consistently argued that prevention should become the organising principle of health policy. Healthy hydration is exactly the kind of practical, evidence-based, affordable and effective intervention that philosophy demands.

Moonshots don’t fail through a lack of ambition.

They fail because someone decided a vital component wasn’t important enough.