The water diet

There are cosmic dimensions to water; the planet is 70 per cent water and so are we. Our cells bathe in water and without it we deteriorate very rapidly; drying is dying. This much is not new but what is new about water is a new study showing that if you drink more of it, your overall diet starts to become better as well.

The new study examined data on 18,300 adults gathered from the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. In this survey subjects completed questionnaires as to what they had eaten over the last three to 10 days. They then calculated the amount of plain water that the subjects consumed as a percentage of their daily water intake. Beverages like black tea, black coffee, and herbal tea were not counted as part of their water intake.

On average subjects consumed about 4.2 cups of plain water on a daily basis and this was slightly more than 30 per cent of their daily water intake (given that water also comes from many other dietary sources). The average daily kilojoule intake was 9,020 kilojoules including 523 kilojoules from sugar and 1,807 kilojoules from “discretionary” foods like snacks and desserts.

Where the results became interesting though was when the researchers looked at the effect of increasing your water intake.

They found that people who increased their intake of water by as little as one per cent, decreased their total kilojoule intake as well as their consumption of saturated fat, sugar, sodium, and cholesterol.

People who increased their water consumption by one to three cups per day reduced their total energy intake by between 280 and 850 kilojoules. This amount of increased water consumption was also associated with a reduction in sodium intake by 78 to 235 grams, between five and 18 grams less sugar, and total cholesterol consumption was reduced by seven to 21 grams daily.

According to the researchers campaigns promoting health might begin with something as simple as getting people to drink more plain water. Perhaps that is why we call those places you get water from a “well”.