Evian When Reversed Spells Naïve

By Dr. Martin Collis

There’s big money in bottled water. We complain about the price of gas, but it still sells for considerably less than plain old H₂O. The Coca-Cola Company markets Desani™, while Pepsico sells Aquafina™. Neither soft drink giant sells you special glacial water or something from a pure mountain spring, they sell you processed, filtered water from the normal regional water supply. It’s a significant expense to pay for filtration, reverse osmosis and in some cases, mineral enhancement.

I feel sometimes we're frightened into spending money and doing things for our health that are not always necessary. The Bottled Water Association has referred to coffee and pop as "dehydrating beverages" and we are told they are no substitute for water. But in a recent small scale study at the College for Human Nutrition in Omaha, young men were divided into 3 groups who drank:

1. water only
2. equal amounts of water and caffeinated pop
3. water, caffeinated pop and coffee.

They collected urine and did multiple measures of hydration status and guess what? The subjects remained in the same state of hydration no matter what they drank.

Conclusive? No. The numbers were small and they were all young men. I wish they’d had other subjects quaffing beer, or even tea, which is a favorite of mine. I’m not advocating consuming large amounts of caffeine, but I think this is worth looking into further. For instance, as a lifelong tea drinker my perception is that the diuretic effect of tea on me is not measurably different from that of water. Water is great, but don’t feel guilty about dehydrating yourself with your morning tea or coffee, the guilt is probably more dangerous than the caffeine.