Have you ever heard that you should drink 8 glasses of water a day? Well this is a very basic way of putting it but I’ll expand so you can appreciate why. Now stick with me on this because half the reason there is so much confusion about nutrition is because only half the message is heard.
We have access to everything we could ever want on a supermarket shelf, we have long forgotten how we SHOULD eat, so recommending 8 glasses of water a day is an effective way of getting a message across. Your body is made up of about 70% water, so it would make sense that your nutrient intake should also be about 70% water. Take vegetables for example, they too are approximately 70% water. Fruit contains about 90% water. But we eat so much processed foods that our water intake is very low from food alone and therefore we are advised to drink water to maintain our bodies balance.
Let’s say you drank 2 litres of water within half an hour. What would happen? Firstly you would need to pee!! But let’s look at this seriously, there is a delicate balance in the body. Once you drink the water it is absorbed into your blood so it can be eliminated by the kidneys. But if all of that water was in your blood you would have very high blood pressure. So the body uses osmosis to balance out the amount of water in the blood and the amount in the cells by taking electrolytes from the cells and adding them to the blood. Then your blood continues to be filtered by the kidneys and all the electrolytes that were keeping your cells balanced is being flushed down the toilet.
When you eat fruits and vegetables you are consuming water. But this is healthier than just drinking water because it has other vital nutrients attached to the water molecules. Therefore you are not being overloaded with water, and the body has time to separate the water molecules from the rest of the food without causing osmosis and wasting our precious electrolytes.
Most importantly – KEEP DRINKING WATER!! This is not a message to stop drinking water! But just remember that the more high water content food you add to your diet, the better off your body will be.
Written by Helen La Fontaine
Founder – Top Secret Maternity
Bachelor of Applied Science – Food Science and Nutrition | Master of Public Health