Water & I
Water & I
How much water do you really need?
Water is one of the most important nutrients and is essential in every life stage - infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, breastfeeding, lactation and old age.
Every day we lose water through our breath, skin, urine and bowels. Water intake must balance these losses, and an Adequate Intake (AI) for total water is set to prevent dehydration, which includes metabolic and functional abnormalities.
Water Recommended Adequate Intake?
(according to the Food and Nutrition Board)
| Life stage Group | Total Water Adequate Intake (L/day) | From Beverages |
|---|---|---|
| 0-6 MONTHS | 0.7 | |
| 6-12 MONTHS | 0.8 | 0.6 |
| 1-3 YEARS | 1.3 | 0.9 |
| 4-8 YEARS | 1.7 | 1.2 |
| 9-13 YEARS (boys) | 2.4 | 1.8 |
| 9-13 YEARS (girls) | 2.1 | 1.6 |
| 14-18 YEARS (boys) | 3.3 | 2.6 |
| 14-18 YEARS (girls) | 2.3 | 1.8 |
| 19-71 YEARS (men) | 3.7 | 3.0 |
| 19-71 YEARS (women) | 1.7 | 2.2 |
| 14-50 YEARS (women - pregnancy) | 3.0 | 2.3 |
| 14-50 YEARS (women - lactation) | 3.8 | 3.1 |
Why water is the best choice of beverage...
The primary ingredient in sweet beverages is water. Other ingredients are added to sweet beverages to provide flavor, color, and taste like sucrose, fructose, artificial, fruits extracts, and others.
Increased consumption of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) is frequently linked to an increase in negative health risks such as Type 2 diabetes (T2D), weight gain, obesity, metabolic syndrome, coronary artery disease, and high blood pressure. These links have been attributed to several potential mechanisms as follows: an incomplete compensatory reduction in energy intake at subsequent meals after the intake of liquid calories; a glycemic effect with a rapid spike in blood glucose and insulin concentrations, which could lead to insulin resistance over time and a rapid hunger response.
Observational evidence suggests that drinking water is associated with weight loss and a reduction in caloric intake. In contrast, results for artificially sweetened beverages (ASBs) have been sparse and inconsistent, with some studies showing increased risk of T2D, weight gain, and cardiometabolic dysfunction.
These are our recommendations for keeping you and your loved ones hydrated:
Did you know?
Did you know?
Recent evidence suggests that dehydration causes structural and functional brain alterations (decreased brain volume, increased ventricular system, and alterations in blood flow) that may interfere with normal cognitive functioning.
Research carried out on 168 children between 9 and 11 years of age studied the beneficial effects of drinking supplementary water during the school day on cognitive performance and transitory subjective states, such as fatigue or vigor. The classes were randomly divided into a test group, which received water supplementation, and a control group. Dehydration was determined by urine sampling.
School children may improve their cognitive performance by drinking water. Mild dehydration produces changes in a number of important aspects of cognitive function, such as concentration, alertness, short-term memory, perceptual discrimination, arithmetic ability, vasomotor tracking, visual attention tasks and psychomotor skills.
As people get older, they lose their thirst sensation and tend to confuse thirst with hunger. So instead of drinking water they eat, and this results in weight gain.
Knowing and recognizing the difference between hunger and thirst can play a big part in whether we are successful with our daily diets, and feel our best.
People often mistake hunger for thirst because the adult thirst mechanism is weak. Misdiagnosing the sensation of thirst can easily mislead the body into thinking it needs food when what it’s really asking for is water. Moreover, the fact that the symptoms of dehydration (e.g., feeling weak and dizzy) mimic those of hunger, contributes to people’s confusion between the two signals.
Be careful…Obesity can be caused by excessive eating instead of drinking. There is some evidence that such confusion (between hunger and thirst), can lead to eating in response to thirst or drinking in response to hunger. The former can lead to positive energy balance if the energy value of selected foods exceeds that of a beverage that could have been ingested to alleviate thirst, and the latter can have the same effect if the beverage provides uncompensated energy in the diet.
The imperative for access to water is underscored by the “Right of Thirst” in Jewish and Islamic law as well as philosophies in India, Africa and Australia, which state that even strangers be granted access to water in times of need. Thus, thirst is an especially salient deprivation-based signal compared to hunger. In contrast, eating to excess holds greater consequence than drinking to excess, except in extreme cases.