Some of our favourite soap characters should pass up alcohol and hot drinks for a plain glass of water to encourage fans to keep hydrated.
Popular soaps like EastEnders and Coronation Street are famed for their pubs, but the prevalence of booze and soft-drink consumption in the Queen Vic and the Rovers Return has been called "shocking" and "unacceptable".
Analysis of nearly 3000 minutes of British television found little more than one in 20 soap characters' drinks were a glass of water, while more than a third were alcoholic beverages.
Just under half were hot drinks and 7 per cent were soft drinks or fizzy pop, the study for the National Hydration Council (NHC), titled The TV Water Shortage, discovered.
Emma Kenny, a media psychologist, said programme makers had "failed" to take advantage of their ability to positively influence viewers' lifestyles. "I hope that the findings of this report will prove both informative and shocking to the reader in equal measure, and open his or her eyes to the current, unacceptable state of affairs regarding the representation of healthy hydration in some of the nation's most popular television programmes."
