The idea is to help parents and children find alternatives to
sugar-laden drinks such as soda, sports drinks and fruit juices.
Of course, finding alternatives, including flavored waters and
diet soda, is no guarantee that people will choose water over
cola. So the campaign provides some scary stats: a quarter of
Maryland children are obese or overweight and sugary drinks are
the No. 1 source of empty calories in children’s diets.
Organizers add that if each student in the typical Howard County
middle school drank just a single 12-ounce can of soda each day,
they would consume approximately 10 tons of sugar over the
course of a year. FACEBOOK FITNESS CHALLENGE “Setting goals is
easy. Reaching them is where the challenge lies.” That’s the
premise of a Facebook group designed to help people achieve
their health and fitness goals by daring them to publicly commit
to a different challenge each month. The group was created by
Jaime Andrews, a trainer who calls her methodology “commitment
training.” At the start of