Don’t like plain water? Here’s how to get your 8 glasses a day

Posted By Susan Bowerman On September 20, 2012 @ 7:30 am

Water is important for your health, but do other beverages count toward meeting your daily fluid needs?
You’ve probably heard the old expression, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink”.  Well, I’ve got plenty of clients who are just like that horse.  They knowwater is important to their health and they’ve heard the common advice that they should drink about 8 glasses of water a day. But, as one client said to me recently, “this is going to sound strange, but I just hate water – there’s no way I can choke down 8 glasses of plain water a day”.  Which leads to the question: does it have to be plain water?  Do any other beverages count?
In a word, yes – other beverages do count towards your daily liquid consumption.  Many people take the water advice a bit too literally and assume that, even if they are drinking other beverages, they still need to drink 8 glasses of plain water too.

Does tea or coffee count towards your 8 glasses a day?
Some of the confusion has stemmed from the fact that many commonly consumed beverages contain caffeine, which is considered to be a diuretic.  The thinking goes like this:  if caffeine makes you urinate, then a caffeinated drink will surely cause you to lose more water than you take in, so a caffeinated drink can’t really be a fluid – maybe it’s more like a ‘negative fluid’.
Well, here’s the good news for coffee and tea lovers – it turns out that, for the most part, this simply isn’t true.  A review¹on the topic, which summarized numerous studies on the subject conducted over nearly 40 years, reported that taking in a large amount of caffeine at one time(around 300 mg, or what you’d get in 2-3 cups of strong coffee – and not an amount you’d drink all at once) can promote urination, but only in people who haven’t had any caffeine for weeks.  And those who are habitual caffeine consumers develop a tolerance to the diuretic effects – much like they develop a tolerance to the stimulating effects.  The report also stated that “doses of caffeine equivalent to the amount normally found in standard servings of tea, coffee and carbonated soft drinks appear to have no diuretic action”.  So there you go; caffeinated beverages definitely “count” when it comes to meeting fluid needs.
Actually, all beverages can contribute to your fluid requirement – like coffee, tea, fruit juice, broth, vegetable juice, sports drinks and low fat milk – since they’re primarily water. So if, like my client, you just can’t face drinking water, these “water alternatives” still count.
So, why drink water?
Keep in mind that water is the “original beverage” – it was the only option up until the time that tea was first consumed as a beveragesome 3,000 years ago. Water’s natural, it’s readily available and, unlike many other beverages, water is calorie-free.
So water should be your first choice, but plain coffee or tea is fine, too –  and sports drinks, broth and vegetable juices are also relatively low in calories.  But just because caffeine doesn’t ‘take away’ from yourfluid intake, don’t rely on calorie-laden coffee drinks to meet your needs. If you do, you could reallypile on the pounds – and meeting your fluid consumption needs will be the least of your problems.

¹ Maughan RJ, Griffin J. J Human Nutrition & Dietetics. 2003

Written by Susan Bowerman.  Susan is a paid consultant to Herbalife. Herbalife markets beverage mixes and dietary supplements containing caffeine.

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Article printed from Discover Good Nutrition: http://www.discovergoodnutrition.com