Hollywood loves water. There’s the shower scene in “Psycho.” Dustin Hoffman lounging in the pool in “The Graduate.” Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr rolling around the beach in “From Here to Eternity.” Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea.
Fun stuff, water, until you actually drink it. Then it’s strictly a snore. Water is the “forgotten nutrient,” lost in a sea of carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals.
“People turn their noses up at water even though it is the best thirst quencher,” said Christine Palumbo, a nutrition consultant from Naperville. “It’s not exciting, it’s boring.”
After all, who wants to drink water when there’s coffee, colas, teas, juices, milkshakes, sports drinks, beers, wines, vodka tonics and margaritas out there? Even bottled water advertisements focus on lean bodies and high-energy activities, not how the product tastes.
Water may be short on excitement, but it has long been necessary. It is involved in nearly every physiological process. It moves nutrients, hormones and antibodies through the bloodstream and lymphatic system. It rids the body of waste products. It is essential to cooling your body’s core temperature, which would burn you up if left unregulated. We can’t live much longer than three to five days without water.
The body of a typical adult contains 60 to 70 percent water. Babies are closer to 90 percent. Our brains are 90 percent water, while blood is 85 percent water. Muscles are 75 percent, the liver is 69 percent and even bones have 22 percent water.
OK, so we’re walking aquariums. How much water do we really have to drink to stay healthy? Who’s the wise guy who recommended drinking eight glasses of the stuff every day? Should we drink bottled or tap water? Here’s a healthy flow of answers.
8 glasses a day …
“Many people forget water is actually a beverage,” says Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. “But is there anybody who drinks six to eight glasses of water every day? People do seem to drink that amount of fluids in a day.”
Just who started this eight-glasses-a-day dictum is unclear. But among nutritionists and dietary historians quizzed, Paul Thomas of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., had the best explanation.
His organization’s Food and Nutrition Board publishes the country’s official Required Daily Allowances. The first RDAs edition in 1943 had no mention of water. Two years later, the second edition changed that.
“A suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 liters (83 ounces) daily in most instances,” the book states. “An ordinary standard for diverse people is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.”
Somehow, the final sentence was lost in the translation. Most doctors and nutritionists say we don’t need to drink every one of those eight glasses of water if we eat the proper foods.
Fruits and vegetables, known in some circles as “live” foods, contain structured or intracelluar water that is more biologically active than even distilled or spring water. Replenishing your body’s water with these foods is better than chugging from your water bottle all day.
Most vegetables and fruits, for example, are at least 85 percent water. Even potatoes and bananas check in at 75 percent. In contrast, the typical hamburger is 55 percent water, with the bun at 36 percent.
Nonetheless, a good number of nutritionists and diet authors since World War II have recommended we drink roughly a half-gallon of water each day.
“A typical woman expends about 2,200 calories per day through normal activities, including breathing,” explains Palumbo, who also is on Hinckley & Schmitt’s Scientific Advisory Board. “She needs three quarts of water, but not all from drinking it.”
Say you get about 1 1/2 quarts from your diet and another half-pint from water produced in the body’s metabolic processes. That leaves 48 ounces, or six 8-ounce glasses of water. Throw in another two glasses in case your diet is lacking, or for hot days, and you’re there.
Water break No. 1
Some fun facts to impress your friends around the water cooler.
There is no water on the moon, which is why it has so many craters. When megatons of space matter were flying around megacenturies ago, the Earth had its own share of pockmarks, which later were mostly smoothed out by oceans, rivers and streams. Mars and Venus also have no seas or rainfall, making it unlikely there is any form of life on either planet.
The good, the bad…
The eight-glasses-a-day movement picked up momentum in 1967 when Dr. Irwin Stillman published his first diet book, “The Doctor’s Quick Weight Loss Diet.” In it, he urged dieters to drink eight 10-ounce glasses of water each day along with a high-protein, no-carbohydrate diet. The book sold more than 7 million copies in paperback and 5 million in hardcover. In his next book, Stillman conceded that his followers could include other allowed beverages-coffee, tea, diet sodas, club soda-in the daily count.
According to most nutritionists, coffee and sodas aren’t good substitutes for water. These caffeinated drinks act as diuretics, drawing water from your system at advanced rates. Alcohol has the same effect.
Milk, juices, carbonated waters and club sodas are acceptable substitutes-though you want to be careful about what else is contained in such beverages. For example, fresh apple juice is concentrated with natural sugar.
“Perhaps the best reason to drink water is to avoid drinking too much of the bad-caffeine, fats, sugars and sodium found in other beverages,” Liebman said.
Bathroom break No. 1
Let’s get right to the heart of the bladder. If you’re drinking all this water, when would you ever quit making pit-stops?
“People need to be sensitive to their own bodies and their ways,” Palumbo said. “The keys are frequency and color of urination. You want to urinate every 2- to 3-hours with a good stream and a light yellow color, the shade of lemon juice.
“If your urine is dark yellow and less frequent, it’s likely you are not drinking enough water or fluids. If you drink a lot of water on an empty stomach, you may have to go once and then maybe 20 minutes later.”
Go with the flow
Our internal thirst mechanism, the hypothalamus, regulates body temperature. It deteriorates with age, making it important for elderly people to drink more water. The hypothalamus is not that efficient in any case. When you become aware of thirst, it is usually after you need the water.
This is most true when exercising or doing heavy work, according to William Evans, director of the Noll Human Performance Laboratory at Penn State University. He suggests drinking extra water, especially on hot days.
“Drinking plenty of water is probably the best way to enhance exercise performance,” said Evans, who has advised pro sports teams and the military on nutrition matters. “Dehydration can affect how fast you run or bike or ski. As you get older, you will be more prone to dehydration injuries.”
Palumbo says the human flow of water may account for some cravings throughout the day.
“When you are lethargic and think you need something to eat, maybe you just need something to drink,” she said. “My clients who drink more water become accustomed to it. They find they need it more to keep feeling good.”
Water break No. 2
The Earth’s available fresh water represents about one-half percent of its supply. About 97 percent of the planet’s water is saltwater and another 2 percent is locked in icecaps and glaciers. Vast reserves of fresh water are under the Earth’s surface, but much of it is too far from the surface for cost-effective tapping.
The U.S. uses 1,300 gallons of water per person each day-most of that is used for agriculture. For example, to produce a pound of meat requires an average of 2,500 gallons of water-or about the amount used by the typical family for an entire month of household purposes.
Our daily consumption is three times as much as the average daily per capita consumption of a European country and much more than developing nations.
We don’t use much of that water for drinking. According to Beverage Industry magazine, annual per capita consumption of tap water was 34.1 gallons in 1992. The figure is actually up a half-gallon after a 20-year downturn from 1970 to 1990.
Observers attribute the increase to the economic times-180 glasses of tap water still cost only a penny-and to Perrier’s benzene scare in 1990.
To a growing number of water drinkers, it is worth the extra money to buy bottled water. Americans averaged 9.9 gallons of the stuff in 1992, three times the amount we drank in 1982 but still far behind the 48-gallon yearly count per person for soft drinks.
The watershed question
Is it OK to draw from the tap or should you buy bottled water?
“In my opinion, our water has always been safe,” said Roger Selburg, manager of the Division of Public Water Supplies for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. “If anything, it has gotten better. Technology is more advanced, so we can test for more contaminants and clean them up.”
Those contaminants have some fearful names: pathogens, trihalomethanes, lead, radon, arsenic. The federal EPA has been aggressive about testing for lead in our drinking water. It has been found at unsafe levels in many communities throughout the country. Lead poisoning is most harmful to children under 8, and can cause problems with pregnancies.
On its third attempt since April 1992, Chicago finally passed the EPA’s lead test last fall. Taking samples from the required highest-risk locations, the city’s water was found to have 14.4 parts of lead per billion, just under the 15-parts standard. Given the samples were drawn from the worst-case conditions, city officials said most of our water would be near the minimum detectable level of 5 parts per billion.
Chicago, which draws its water from Lake Michigan, also supplies water to nearly 120 suburbs. Each one has to test their own water to meet EPA standards. More than half of all area towns, including those supplied by the city, have failed EPA lead tests from time to time in recent years.
Municipal water purification plants are not the problem. Lead leaches into drinking water through main distribution lines or household plumbing made with lead pipes, particularly if the water has been standing for several hours. Deteriorating lead solder on plumbing fittings is another trouble spot. In 1986, Congress banned the use of lead in plumbing in almost all cases.
Water break No. 3
Some historians say lead poisoning explains the fall of the Roman Empire, theorizing the population went slightly crazy from the effects of drinking water tainted with lead.
“Everybody is looking for one single reason why it fell,” said Eugene Borza, professor of ancient history at Penn State. “Of course, it’s more complex. There were all kinds of administrative and economic factors.
“It’s an easy theory. Lead is bad and Romans had it in their water.”
If only they’d known
Guess the Romans didn’t know about phosphates. Chicago is now adding phosphates to its water, due to the earlier lead-test failures. The phosphates coat the inner piping and prevent the water from mingling with lead.
According to JSC Group’s environmental consultant Johanna Platt, putting phosphates in the water is a “great first step.” But she acknowledges it will be some time before the minerals can take hold.
Platt said there is a simple solution for anyone concerned with lead or other contaminents coming from the tap. Run your water for a minute or two, letting it become fully cold. This eliminates any standing water, though that may be hard to do in a high-rise.
“Never use hot water for drinking or cooking,” Platt said. “It leaches lead more easily.”
Some municipalities, Chicago included, will perform free lead tests of your water. But you will likely be put on a waiting list. JSC Group offers a new product called Lead-Detect (about $30), which allows you to take a sample of your tap water, drop it in an easy-to-mail box and get results in two weeks.
You can also contact the Illinois EPA at 217-782-6455 for a list of local labs certified to test for lead and other contaminants. Lead monitoring is relatively inexpensive ($20 to $50), but tests for other contaminants can run much more.
Some water aficionados choose to use an at-home water filter system, which can offer a cheaper way to purify your water than ripping out your lead pipes. Reverse-osmosis filtering systems are generally the best purifiers but are more costly and wasteful than carbon-filter systems. Be warned: Many carbon filters do not screen out lead.
Or you can simply reach for bottled water. New EPA labeling regulations have tightened up the industry to separate commercial water suppliers who were bascially selling tap water in fancy containers. The International Bottled Water Association, Water Quality Association and National Sanitation Foundation are names to look for on bottled water labels. Also, the better manufacturers will explain the source of the water.
Bathroom break No. 2
When nutritionists consulted with the U.S. military during Desert Storm, they confronted an interesting problem for the women who served in the extreme heat.
“It turned out the women were chronically dehydrated,” said one adviser. “Going to the latrine during the night was a chore. You didn’t want to have to put on your uniform, get your gun and even a compass. The men brought a tin can into their tents. The women simply stopped drinking water early in the evening.”
