Eight Glasses (of Water) a Day: The Origins of a Nutritional Adage
The world is full of rules, formulas, and rules of thumb. Some are well out of date, such as the old saw that for every dollar’s worth of gas you put into a car, you will also put a dollar’s worth of repairs into the thing. (That’s no longer true, given the much improved efficiency of cars in the last twenty years or so.) Others are of extremely questionable utility, such as the one about waiting an hour after eating to go swimming, which I’ll examine in a forthcoming post. Others still are of most definite value, such as Frank Zappa’s enjoinder not to eat yellow snow.
And which is the insistent claim that an adult must, simply must, drink eight glasses of water a day?
Credit: Steve Lupton/Corbis
Credit: Steve Lupton/Corbis
Let’s be more specific than that: an adult, it’s said, must drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water (and by this reckoning, no, beer doesn’t count as water in a different form) a day. This means that said adult, no matter how inert or active, must drink a gallon of water a day, on top of whatever else he or she consumes.
I’ve heard some variation of the admonition—usually without the requirement that the glass be of a particular size—all my life, which means that it has been current for at least six decades. And indeed, according to a medical researcher named Heinz Valtin, writing in 2002 in the imposingly-named American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, the origin of the “8×8 rule” seems to lie in a government report of 1945 in which the writer advanced the reasonable claim that “a suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 liters daily in most instances.”
The 8×8 rule does not, however, take into account the next two sentences, and particularly the second: “An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” Neither does the rule allow for the liberal interpretation offered by the once-influential nutritionist Frederick J. Stare, who wrote in 1974, “How much water each day? This is usually well regulated by various physiological mechanisms, but for the average adult, somewhere around 6 to 8 glasses per 24 hours and this can be in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, beer, etc. Fruits and vegetables are also good sources of water.”
So beer counts after all, and so do all the other liquids that a person might take in over the course of the ordinary day, and so does the water to be extracted from an ear of corn or a peach or, one supposes, a nice juicy hamburger (or, for those so inclined, tofu burger).
“The published data available to date strongly suggest that, with the exception of some diseases and special circumstances, such as strenuous physical activity, long airplane flights, and climate, we probably are currently drinking enough and possibly even more than enough.” So concludes Dr. Valtin’s article. The emphasis is his, and it’s worth noting that, given climate change and the attendant rising temperatures, it might not be a bad idea to check to be sure that one’s fluid intake is suited to the task at hand. (Eat some salty food, too, a matter that, again, will be the subject of a future article here.)
You might also think of being better hydrated when being put to the strenuous task of taking a test. According to a recent study conducted at two English universities and reported by the BBC, students who brought water into an exam and, what is also important, drank it tended to score higher than those who did not.
It’s worth noting, if only as a curiosity, that in the 447-person study group, it was the older students who thought to bring water with them. Can we extract meaning from that fact? Perhaps, and perhaps not, but I’m betting that the oldsters had had the 8×8 rule pounded into their heads. It may be overkill, but whatever the case, there’s no evidence that following the rule does any harm to a person of ordinary health, barring the need, perhaps, to ask the proctor for a hall pass during the test.
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And which is the insistent claim that an adult must, simply must, drink eight glasses of water a day?
Credit: Steve Lupton/Corbis
Credit: Steve Lupton/Corbis
Let’s be more specific than that: an adult, it’s said, must drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water (and by this reckoning, no, beer doesn’t count as water in a different form) a day. This means that said adult, no matter how inert or active, must drink a gallon of water a day, on top of whatever else he or she consumes.
I’ve heard some variation of the admonition—usually without the requirement that the glass be of a particular size—all my life, which means that it has been current for at least six decades. And indeed, according to a medical researcher named Heinz Valtin, writing in 2002 in the imposingly-named American Journal of Physiology—Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, the origin of the “8×8 rule” seems to lie in a government report of 1945 in which the writer advanced the reasonable claim that “a suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 liters daily in most instances.”
The 8×8 rule does not, however, take into account the next two sentences, and particularly the second: “An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” Neither does the rule allow for the liberal interpretation offered by the once-influential nutritionist Frederick J. Stare, who wrote in 1974, “How much water each day? This is usually well regulated by various physiological mechanisms, but for the average adult, somewhere around 6 to 8 glasses per 24 hours and this can be in the form of coffee, tea, milk, soft drinks, beer, etc. Fruits and vegetables are also good sources of water.”
So beer counts after all, and so do all the other liquids that a person might take in over the course of the ordinary day, and so does the water to be extracted from an ear of corn or a peach or, one supposes, a nice juicy hamburger (or, for those so inclined, tofu burger).
“The published data available to date strongly suggest that, with the exception of some diseases and special circumstances, such as strenuous physical activity, long airplane flights, and climate, we probably are currently drinking enough and possibly even more than enough.” So concludes Dr. Valtin’s article. The emphasis is his, and it’s worth noting that, given climate change and the attendant rising temperatures, it might not be a bad idea to check to be sure that one’s fluid intake is suited to the task at hand. (Eat some salty food, too, a matter that, again, will be the subject of a future article here.)
You might also think of being better hydrated when being put to the strenuous task of taking a test. According to a recent study conducted at two English universities and reported by the BBC, students who brought water into an exam and, what is also important, drank it tended to score higher than those who did not.
It’s worth noting, if only as a curiosity, that in the 447-person study group, it was the older students who thought to bring water with them. Can we extract meaning from that fact? Perhaps, and perhaps not, but I’m betting that the oldsters had had the 8×8 rule pounded into their heads. It may be overkill, but whatever the case, there’s no evidence that following the rule does any harm to a person of ordinary health, barring the need, perhaps, to ask the proctor for a hall pass during the test.
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