Should you or shouldn’t you drink 8 glasses of water a day? (Part 2)
I said a week, but, eh. I mean, one month, one week. Same diff. Or not. (also I'm actually really sorry, I'm a giant flake.) You ready for another super long post on water and bullshit? Awww yiss.
Last month on That's Bullshit Tho, I talked about ButterBeliever's 1st of 8 reasons not to drink water. And sure, yeah. It was wordy, long, probably annoying, and need we forget that no one read it? But lest we forget our mistakes of the past, here is a link to the past and also, a link (archived) to the believer of butter his/herself. I'm not trying to hurt the feelings of all the Butterkin out in the wild of this stupid website, but from here on out I will refer to ButterBeliever as Butter. Butter is actually female based on research (I went to the about me section on their website). So I will be refering to her as such from here on out.
So anyway to continue the work from the last time I was here, let's talk about point 2 of 8. Namely:
2.) You’re already getting water in your food.
Following up from last month, this is a point that I can get behind. Butter says the following, which I think is pretty much spot on:
"Point is, you get water just about every time you eat."
I agree. Unless you're eating dehydrated foods without rehyrdating them in some way, it is very likely that you are having water with your food. So, I agree with Butter on this point. I'd agree more wholeheartedly if she wouldn't illustrate her point with stuff that is opinion but state them like they're facts though.
She clarifies her point by stating that she doesn't like powdered milk or powdered eggs. And those two things are absolutely fine to dislike, so this isn't me saying that she's wrong for disliking powdered milk or eggs. This is me asking what that has to do with anything. It's an opinion, and while it isn't wrong to say that powdered milk and powdered eggs had water taken out of them, calling them nasty makes these things sound bad. It isn't necessary to take a shit on foods one dislikes to make a point.
That being said, I've never been the type to accept things at face value. So, I decided to look up powdered milk, just to be sure she's correct. And she is technically incorrect (in the sense that there is still water in powdered milk) but on a whole, largely correct (because the amount of water remaining in powdered milk seems to be greater than 1%, but less than 5%, which is basically nothing to people who aren't scientists). Even evaporated milk still has water in it (which people who use evaporated milk know), just not 100% of the water that's in fresh milk. Here is a book on the science of cooking that includes a chart with the water percentages in evaporated and condensed milk (as compared to fresh milk and two types of dry milk). Powdered milk is also known as dry milk, apparently... I didn't know that before I looked this up. The book I'm referencing, by the way, was published in 2007.
I know, I know. None of that was bullshit. It was just something that annoyed me. ButterBeliever's website is a blog where her opinions are facts she can toss around. This is my blog, but I hope people call me out on my opinions on things. But I also enjoy fact checking. Fact checking is great. Which is why, after I read her first line:
"Even if you were supposed to be drinking 64 ounces of water every day, you’d be getting a significant portion of that simply by eating food."
I went out of my way to find out if 64 oz (by the way, I'm assuming Butter meant fluid ounces and not... just regular ounces since we don't usually weigh water by the pound) was the recommended amount of water to drink by the NIH. 64 fl oz of water seems like nothing, but it's about 1.8L. I ended up on the National Library of Medicine's page on water (don't worry, still a part of the NIH) here where they state that there is no specific recommendation on how much water you should drink, but that you should take in between 91 to 125 fl oz of water between eating and drinking everyday. That's about 2.7 liters.
The 64 oz figure obviously comes from the 8 by 8 (8 glasses of 8 oz of water) mentality. But it seems like no one (except for the saying, so... I guess everyone?) is saying that you need to drink 8 oz of water a day. If eating well every day (as in a healthy amount of food per day, within caloric restrictions and whatnot) nets you about 91 oz of water a day, and you are an adult of a healthy weight and normal height, AND you drink 64 oz of water on top of that, that's... like 155 oz of water a day. 4 liters of water.
So, what's the lethal dose of water for 50% of the population, the LD50? According to the American Chemistry Society, 6L of water will kill a 165 lbs person. They give a pretty good explaination in this video. That being said, they say, "If you drink it all at once, so don't do that". I tried to find out if there was a ratio of water to body mass that would produce death, but... I mean, if the only ratio we have is 6L to 165lbs, I can't do much. I'm not a scientist. Well. OK, I am. But only with computers.
My overall point is that for an adult who is exceedingly normal and otherwise healthy, 4L of water of day isn't bad enough to kill. Whether or not a person CHOOSES to drink and eat enough to reach levels that are crazy is what's messy.
So overall, I agree with point 2. Nothing's wrong with it. No bullshit. Moving on to point 3:
3.) You’re missing out on nutrient-dense beverages
The first time I read this list, this was the point that stopped me first and made me go, "Yeah?" in that sarcastic tone of voice you save for that special guy who is just so smart, smarter than even experts in the subject matter.
This particular point had a source, the Weston A. Price Foundation. The page linked is on healthy drinks (as opposed to soda). Now, I knew nothing about Weston A. Price and decided to look into their foundation (see all the information I am using here). I also looked into Weston Price himself. As it turns out a lot of the information I was looking for about him came from the foundation so, you can find most of the information I'm using against the foundation and Weston Price on wikipedia, see here. Also, there is a fallacy known as appeal to authority that I'd like to talk about for a bit before we get started here.
Appeal to authority is the fallacy in which because someone who is an an authority on a subject (Person A) says something about the subject (Subject S), we believe that the statement they made is the truth (Statement T). HOWEVER. There are two ways this fallacy can be committed. The fallacy is committed when Person A is not an expert on Subject S, but rather some other subject. It can also be committed if person A is an authority on the subject. An appeal to authority is not a strong argument. Example: Jenny McCarthy and anti-vaccination is absolutely an appeal to authority (if people believe what Jenny says simply because she says it). Neil DeGrasse Tyson saying that the Earth isn't flat is an appeal to authority because he is an expert in astrophysics. Jenny McCarthy is just a bad appeal to authority. Neil deGrasse Tyson is a good one that's still weak, because he didn't source it. But it's more credible than Jenny McCarthy's statement.
All that being said, this isn't to say that Jenny McCarthy is a liar and if you believe her you're stupid or anything like that. She's definitely not an authority on the subject though, so citing her makes you look stupid, I can tell you that much. She is an authority on other subjects, like how best to host a TV show or how to move your career from nude modeling to TV. And before you think I'm making fun of her, I'm very serious, props to that woman from taking Playboy fame and moving to TV and news. People act like every girl in Playboy got to be a TV celebrity. They haven't. Give her credit where credit's due, she's basically the reigning expert on that. Modeling nude isn't a bad thing, but I feel like people treat your like you're tainted after that, and Jenny McCarthy moved past that in a way that I don't think most people could do/have done. So there are her props, but I still think she's kind of stupid for the anti-vaccination stuff.
I bring up appeal to authority because it is this fallacy that starts and ends this foundation and in a way, the use of the foundation as a source. Price is a pivotal person for Americans. He was the dentist who founded the National Dental Association (NDA), which is the research portion of the American Dental Association (ADA). He was the chairman of the NDA for 14 years.
Price made tools and all sorts of amazing advancments for dentists, in a technological sense. He also worked on a theory called focal infection theory, which has since been debunked but once was a popular thought amongst dentists for a period. The theory essentially states that a localised infection can break off microorganisms and infect other parts of the body. Price wrote a book on this in 1923, drawing on 25 years of research from himself and others in the dentistry field.
There is a resurgance of this theory, if you're interested in looking it up. But more to the point, Price is a dentist who, while he may have had some knowledge on nutrition, is not an expert in nutrition. As such, following Price's advice on nutrition is appealing to authority. He is an expert in dentistry, not nutrition, so anything he believes as far as nutrition is concerned is best taken with a grain of salt. Also, he's credited with much of the development of alternative, holistic, or unconventional dentistry. He's an influential figure for sure, but the influence spreads both into what I believe is nonsense (holistic anything is what I consider flat out nonsense) and proven science (all of his tecnological advancements and even his work into the focal infection theory). I don't think that just because he was wrong about focal infection theory meant he was a bad dentist. In fact, he was probably quite good. And in science, if you're not comfortable with being wrong, from time to time anyway, then you're doing it wrong. So, I would say that if you were to look back on the legacy of Price, he was probably a very good dentist who inadvertently, with his foray into nutrition and other unrelated fields, caused holistic dentistry, which probably hurts more people than it helps.
All this being said... The foundation is founded on the ideals of Price. Price's nutritional beliefs came under scrutiny when he was alive, these people agree with his beliefs. I don't want to get too into this because look at how far away from the topic we've gotten already, but... I mean why not. We're here now. Because the foundation is bullshit.
The foundation says and believes a lot of things that are somewhat presumptuous, mostly stemming from what seems to be a very nuanced reading of the words of Price, as well as having little to no source outside of Price himself. The thing is that people don't disagree that nutrition and dental health are connected in some way. They just think it needs more research. Whereas the Price foundation seems set on the idea that Price had it right, despite his ONLY actual expertise being in dentistry. The ADA has a page, mouthhealthy.org where they even have some points on nutrition and they defer to the USDA's MyPlate for the proper diet for your teeth. They also wrote a paper on preventing oral diseases from spreading. What isn't repeated is the things written here. Statements like:
"Instead of nourishing food, modern medicine gives drugs, the chief modus operandi of which is to sequester nutrients from one part of the body and carry them to the part that is diseased or injured. This is akin to robbing Peter to pay Paul, rather than simply making sure that Paul has all the nutritional wealth he requires."
go unchallenged to the Price Foundation, even though there is no proof to back this up and I would be hesitant to agree that this is what Price intended or even actually said. Unfortunately I haven't read his book, so I don't know if that is what he meant or what he said.
The foundation says that nutritionally dense drinks can be better than water, which is another half truth. They can be better than water, absolutely. But recall, “sola dosis facit venenum”, the dose makes the poison. When you've run a race or a marathon, drinking gatorade is recommended over water. Why? Gatorade is supposed to replenish the electrolytes lost during the race. There are some studies, like this that say things like:
The use of sports drinks instead of water or electrolyte‐free drinks is one strategy for slowing down the development of hyponatraemia. This approach is recommended by the American College of Sports Medicine for ultraendurance races and the Institute of Medicine for prolonged physical labour in hot environments.
This says that hyponatraemia (low concentration of sodium in the blood) can be slowed down if you drink a sports drink after a race. It doesn't say that this drink is better than water. It says it's better than water at replenishing your eletrolytes and keeping your sodium levels normal after a race.
On a whole, if you're participating in healthy behaviors and eating a healthy diet, surprisingly you don't need to supplement your eating with nutrient dense drinks. I linked MyPlate a while back, but let's make a MyPlate for Butter. Butter is an adult female, so I'll just make a MyPlate for an adult female. You can make your own at MyPlate, by the way. I'm going to say she's between 30 and 40, btw.
An adult female between 30 and 40 years needs to eat 1.5 cups of fruit per meal. So... 1/2 a large apple or 1 small apple. Or a cup and a 1/2 of sliced banana. Fruits are high in Vitamin C, potassium, folic acid, and fiber. Fiber can't be found in fruit juices. As for veggies, she needs 2.5 cups per meal. You can break the vegetables in subgroups (dark leafy veggies, starchy potatoes, red and orange vegetables, beans, and other) and they give you values for those too, although I'm not going to. 2.5 cups of veggies is the same as 5 cups of raw spinach or 24 baby carrots or 2.5 cups of mashed or whole cooked beans or 2.5 cups of corn. Veggies give you potassium, dietary fiber, folate (folic acid), vitamin A, and vitamin C. For grains, Butter should eat 6 oz of grain per meal. So, like, a slice of bread, 7 crackers, or 1/2 an English muffin. Grains give you dietary fiber, several B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folate), and minerals (iron, magnesium, and selenium). For meats (or protein) she needs 5 oz per meal. Which is about 5 eggs per meal, 5 oz of fish, 2.5 oz of nuts, or 5 slices of sandwich meat. Meat and proteins give you protein, B vitamins (niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, and B6), vitamin E, iron, zinc, and magnesium. And also seafood gives you the omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA. Women at Butter's projected age need 3 cups of dairy. That's 3 cups of low fat or fat free milk and 1 cup of calcium fortified soymilk. Dairy gives you calcium, potassium, vitamin D, and protein. Lastly oils. Butter should eat 5 tsps of oil per meal. 1 Tbsp of margarine (no trans. fats) has 3 tsps of oil. So... I guess do that math. Oils contain polyunsaturated (PUFA) or monounsaturated (MUFA) fats and essential fatty acids.
Now if Butter eats a diet that follows this to a T, she would be getting the nutrients she needs from every meal without having to fortify herself with drinks. She says there are beneficial probiotics people are missing out on-- does she mean like the ones in dairy products like yogurt? She says there are nutrients missing, which exists in literally every food and her last point was LITERALLY that we eat water in our food so we don't need to drink as much water as the 8 by 8 claims. So we DO need to over eat nutirents but we DON'T need to over drink water? That seems inconsistent. Water toxicity aside, Butter claimed that drinking too much water caughed cold hands and braing fog. Just as an example, excessive Vitamin C has been linked to diarrhea. And Butter says vitamins need to be replenished by nutrient dense drinks too-- the same vitamins that are in a healthy diet, I presume?
So to conclude: Butter's source is weak and altogether useless in the scope of things. Butter's theory that nutrient dense beverages should replace water is kind of silly considering that Butter should be eating a diet that replenishes those nutrients anyway, however, Butter is correct in saying that we eat water with our food.
I guess in another month I'll be back. Maybe. We'll see.
