Drinking Water by James Salzman Read Free Book Online

of years have carried water from Mecca on their pilgrimages across the African savannah to Mali and Mauritania. Millions believe that this water can work wonders, that its miraculous properties can heal the sick, cleanse the soul, and ensure longer life.
    And, while perhaps not as obvious, we see the veneration of drinking water in our own lives. Think of the New Age appeal of the town of McCloud’s water, attracting people from around the globe to meditate at the waters’ spiritual vortex. Or consider the mass marketing of bottled water. The “natural origins” of bottled water feature prominently in the marketing for some of the most important bottled water brands. Part of this is surely meant to demonstrate the purity of the water and the implication that it is safer to drink than tap water. But it may be getting at something deeper, as well—that drinking this water brings you closer to Mother Nature, to a purer place. As the historian William Cronon observed, nature “has become a secular deity in this post-romantic age.” Our relationships with drinking water have long been told through spiritual, sanctified stories, and they continue today.

S HOULD WE DRINK EIGHT GLASSES OF WATER A DAY ?
We have all heard this at some point: To stay healthy, you should drink eight eight-ounce glasses of water every day. Not juice, not beer, and definitely not coffee. Water. While omnipresent advice, this turns out to be an urban myth. As a comprehensive 2008 review in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology concluded, “There is no clear evidence of benefit from drinking increased amounts of water.”
No one seems to know for sure where this maxim originated. A 1945 report from the U.S. government’s Food and Nutrition Board recommended that people consume a milliliter of water for every calorie of food. This would work out roughly to sixty-four ounces for a day’s eating. The problem, though, is that this neglects to make clear an important point: much of the water we consume is not drunk. It’s in the foods we eat such as fruits, ice cream, and vegetables. The amount of water we should drink depends on how much water we also have eaten, not to mention how hot it is, activity levels, etc. And even if a standard rule did make sense, eight glasses a day is likely too many. Jurgen Schnermann, a kidney specialist at the National Institutes of Health, recommends half that amount, about a liter of water, to satisfy the body’s daily needs.
What about beauty? Over one-quarter of bottled water drinkers believe it improves the appearance of their hair or skin. Despite lots of websites claiming that drinking lots of water will make your skin smoother and more youthful, there is no evidence that drinking water offers dermatological benefits or prevents wrinkling.
And weight loss? We often hear that drinking throughout the day will make us feel less hungry. If you drink regularly, the pounds will melt away. If only …
In fact, as Pennsylvania State University nutritionist Barbara Rolls explains, “hunger and thirst are controlled by separate systems in the body. People are unlikely to mistake thirst for hunger.” Filling your belly with water, in other words, doesn’t make you less hungry. Nor, she found, does drinking water before or during a meal affect appetite. Eating water-rich foods, however, does make a difference. Subjects who ate soups were less hungry and consumed fewer calories. Better to eat chicken soup than chicken casserole and a glass of water.
But does it have to be water? Doesn’t drinking some liquids, like soda or coffee, cause us to lose more in urine than we take in? Some beverages are diuretics, but only alcohol comes close to being a net loss in hydration and that’s if you consume several servings. Researchers have found that the body retains about two-thirds of a cup of coffee if you’re not a regular java junkie. If your body is accustomed to caffeine, though, then your body retains almost