C. Loon wrote:
> Over on the PCO support list, where most people eat low-carb in one
> fashion or another (e.g. Atkins, CAD, the Zone), people continually urge
> each other to drink, drink, drink lots of water - at least eight 8 oz
> glasses per day. We all know the benefits - hydration, flushing out
> ketones and other toxins, aid to digestion, etc.  But I keep wondering -
> When did we start needing so much water? It seems hard to imagine
> paleopeople as having access to all that much water every day, especially
> if they were nomadic and were often looking for water sources. Were they
> suffering in continual dehydration?Or do we really not need that much
> liquid? I know when I go camping, I drink much less than usual, because
> it's a pain to lug all that extra water that is also needed for washing
> and cooking. In winter it'd be even more difficult.

I wonder about this, too. It's one issue that almost all nutrition
"camps"
seem to agree on, but very little is said about exactly why. I've
heard or
read nutrition advocates literally telling people to drink as much
water
as possible. That's ridiculous! But maybe what they're thinking is
that
if you tell people to do X amount of something, they'll probably end
up doing X-60% of it.

As far as how much we really need: I saw an episode of Lonely Planet
in
which they talked to a native desert-dweller. He explained that he
tried
to drink as little water as possible! It was apparently common wisdom
that the more you drank, the more you needed to drink. In other words,
drinking water decreased your tolerance to dehydration. Now, whether
he was healthy is another question, but it certainly proves that we
don't actually "need" 64 oz of water a day. For that matter, I don't
think my father ever drinks water. He probably has a small glass of
juice in the morning, has a few cups of very weak coffee during the
day, and a couple of glasses of wine at night. He must be almost
60, and looks like he's 45, and has no major health problems.

Anyway, I'm certainly not "anti-water", I just wish advocates would
be more specific about the health implications of various levels
of fluid intake.

And re: Lonely Planet. It's a travel show. In each episode a lone
traveller (and I guess a small film crew) goes to some part of the
world and explores the physical and human geography. They usually
spend some time talking about what the locals eat. In one episode
the guy went to Iceland and Greenland. They showed some locals
eating strips of pure mammal fat (I can't recall if it was seal
or whale or bear or what). The traveller went caribou hunting with
this Icelandic guy, just the two of them with a rifle. The local
guy butchered the caribou right on the spot. I thought the traveller
would be squeamish, but he was pretty open-minded. I guess he's seen
it all by now.

When they opened the deer's stomach, the local told the traveller how
they would eat the vegetable matter inside the stomach in the winter
to get vitamins. The traveller asked if he could try some fresh out
of the stomach, and the local said yeah, sure, we do it all the time.
So the traveller tried it, immediately grimaced and spit it out, while
the local laughed and said he was just pulling his leg.