Choosing Healthy Water a Cool Idea - Just Water International Ltd
A businessman is delivering the equivalent of four home swimming pools of drinking water a month to South Auckland homes in the hope families will ditch soft drink for water.
Just Water's Tony Falkenstein has provided 5000 free water cooler units to South Auckland families for the next two years and is commissioning research on the results.
Customers pay for water, which costs about $1 per litre, making it cheaper than a soft drink, he said, basing his calculation on a 2.5-litre cola costing $3.99. Falkenstein says the novelty of the water cooler encourages people to drink water. "It's a novelty. It is a hell of a lot better for them to drink tap water than coke, but they won't drink tap water."
Professional research will start in the near future but Falkenstein said Just Water's surveys found families were choosing water over soft drink.
"Kids will come in and would rather take water than go to the fridge and take soft drinks."
He admitted he was not a philanthropist because he was making money from the water but said he was concerned by the rate of type-two diabetes in New Zealand and its cost on the nation's health and economy.
He tried to join the Counties Manakau District Health Board's strategic committee to offer "lateral thinking" on diabetes but was turned down because of a conflict of private and public sector interests.
Falkenstein advocates a sugar tax on all products with over 10 per cent sugar, reducing to 4 per cent over six years.
"If you accept that sugar is addictive, you can't just say let's just put a tax on sugar products immediately because people won't be able to handle it, so I am saying, wean people off it over six years and allow manufacturers time to reduce the amount of sugar in their products."
Diabetes New Zealand national president Chris Baty said sugar tax is one of many options that needs to be considered in the battle against obesity.