London – May 13, 2010 – ‘Keep It Light!’, a new consumer campaign is launched today in light of new research, which has uncovered habitual dehydration among 96% of the UK’s office workers. Designed to educate the nation and encourage healthy hydration habits, the campaign is urging people to frequently check the colour of their urine and setting the nation a goal to ‘keep it light’.  The campaign is specifically targeting employers and inviting them to download free posters and information to help them communicate the hydration health message within the workplace.  Free information is available at the ‘Keep It Light!’ website.

Sir Steve Redgrave, five times Olympic gold medallist, is supporting the campaign and comments, “Improving hydration habits is an easy way to improve performance in everyday life. It’s the same message for athletes, taxi drivers, office workers and busy mums alike.”

Currently, two in every three Brits are dehydrated and while our bodies offer an accurate visual detector to ascertain hydration levels, namely the colour of our pee, ‘Keep It Light!’ has found a widespread lack of understanding of what the campaign’s leaders claim to be ‘simple biology’.  Their findings show that 93 percent of office workers either don’t check and/or don’t know what the colour indicates.

‘Keep it Light!’ has been launched in response to the shocking results from a workplace hydration survey, which uncovered an overwhelming lack of hydration knowledge in the UK. Funded by Juice Doctor on behalf of ‘Keep It Light!’, the survey polled over 1,000 UK office workers and questioned them about hydration-related issues, such as their office drinking habits and how they identify and treat dehydration.  The results were astounding…

Pop A Pill and Cure All Ills?

A shocking 75 percent of UK office workers cited their first response to a headache as taking headache pills rather than drinking more water.

Feeling a bit parched?

While the majority of office workers (60 percent) believed that they drink enough water, less than 4 percent are actually getting the recommended 7+ glasses of water per day.  In fact, almost three-quarters of the respondents admitted to drinking either no water at all or only one to two glasses.

Dip in productivity

The vast majority (83.5 percent) of office workers surveyed admitted that being thirsty affects their productivity at work, yet most continue with poor hydration regimes. Just a 2 percent drop in hydration can lead to a massive 20 percent drop in concentration.  The ‘Keep It Light!’ campaign warns that a habitually dehydrated worker can be wasting up to one day per week in loss of concentration.

Let’s shed some light on this…

Our bodies have a natural early warning system for helping us know when we are dehydrated, namely the colour of our pee. However, the survey has shown that less than one-third of people (27.10 percent) admitted to checking the colour of their urine to see if they’re dehydrated. Even worse, only 7 percent of them, the more vigilant, said they notice when their urine is an odd colour, and when they do, they don’t know what it means.

To spread the ‘Keep it Light!’ message, Sir Steve Redgrave and Juice Doctor have enlisted the help of some of the UK’s leading companies – including Birds Eye, Plantronics, The RNLI and TalkTalk (see full list at ‘Keep It Light!’ website) to help educate the British workforce about hydration by providing their employees with posters, fact sheets and other hydration resources.

The ‘Keep It Light!’ website includes a downloadable personal “Y’urindicator” chart from Juice Doctor, which is designed as a pee-tone colour chart to help identify the stages of hydration, as well as other free materials to post up in washrooms, rest areas and offices.