Drinking plain tap water helps keep our teeth healthy and strong, and prevent tooth decay.

Drinking plain tap water instead of sugary drinks provides many benefits to our health and wellbeing, including keeping teeth healthy and strong and preventing tooth decay.

In South Australia, choosing tap water makes good sense as:

• It’s cheap and convenient, coming straight out of the tap.

• It contains no sugar, kilojoules, or caffeine.

• It usually contains fluoride, which helps strengthen bones and teeth and helps prevent tooth decay.

Sugary drinks such as soft drinks, cordial, fruit drinks, vitamin water, sports drinks and energy drinks are:

• Low in nutritional value.

• Often high in kilojoules which can make it harder to maintain a healthy weight.

• Often high in sugar and acidity levels which can contribute to tooth decay.

• Expensive and make it hard to shop for healthy foods on a budget.

Most kids lead active lives but often forget to drink. Remind your child to drink tap water every day.

Some ways to encourage your child to drink tap water include:

• Send them to kindergarten or school with a drink bottle filled with tap water. Many schools and kindergartens allow children to drink water in the classroom - this is a great way to encourage children to drink water during the day.
• Let your kids see you enjoying tap water.
• Have jugs of tap water and cups on hand so they can help themselves.
• Make drinking tap water more fun by adding different shaped ice cubes.