Hydration Mania

One of the things I always find odd in the US are the number of people who carry around bottles of water with them, as if they might find themselves stranded in the middle of a desert at any moment. I grew up in the UK, and nobody felt the need to carry around water with them. I decided to write this post after reading an article recommending no less than 8 glasses of water a day. Even my doctor gave me the same advice. I told him that I often drink orange juice, coffee, and red bull, and wouldn't this count towards my water intake? He said no, it needs to be pure water. What a bunch of crap! Virtually everything you eat contains water, so to calculate your water intake, you need to add up all the sources of water in your calculation. Your digestive system doesn't discriminate against where water comes from! For example, when I was a kid, I had a glass of milk at breakfast, with additional milk in my cereal. Then I had a bottle of milk on my morning school break and orange juice at lunchtime. Then I had lemonade at dinner and a hot meat drink (Bovril) at night. I did plenty of exercise, and virtually never drank water on its own. I view the current popularity of carrying around water bottles as a fad based on mis-information. Interestingly enough, one of the comments to this post points out the following article that supports my view.

Comments

[Glen Stampoultzis]

Yes, it's a very persistent myth. See: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/03/14/water_glasses030314

[moen digrassi]

Maybe it's a cynical attempt to get people in the states to super-size their water consumption instead of sucking down more sugary sodas, cheesburgers and fries.

Let them fill up on water and have the (relative) health benefits from it :^)

[moen digrassi]

Maybe it's a cynical attempt to get people in the states to super-size their water consumption instead of sucking down more sugary sodas, cheeseburgers and fries.

Let them fill up on water and have the (relative) health benefits from it :^)

[Kytari]

That is good to know considering I will generally feel guilty if I don't consume the recommended amount of water. I think that drinking water does do a lot for the skin but doing anything in excess (even drinking water) can do more harm than good.

[Craig Pfeifer]

A "hot meat drink"? And I thought Ovaltine was nasty.