Eight Glasses a Day?

I'm out of left field with the topic today, but, we're on about hydration (and a bit later, sugar).

There are a lot of articles "debunking" the "eight glasses of water a day" suggestion, which is fine and good - eight glasses of water a day is not exactly a good guideline, all things considered - but instead of debunking it in an acceptable way, they say very unhelpful things like, "just drink when you're thirsty," and attempt to debunk our bodies' need for water entirely (it's in your food!), in some sort of mad vendetta against water.

I have a personal anecdote and some amount of information, but I didn't source anything because no one reads this and I don't care. Any facts presented in this post were found by searching briefly on the internet, so I'm not worried about it.

I used to not drink very much water. I used to only be able to stomach drinking ice cold water and drank a lot of other things like soda. Once I stopped soda, I drank more water. I started focusing on drinking more and more water, as my goal was being properly hydrated, knowing it was good for my body. Now, having conditioned myself to drink only water when it's not coffee time, I drink a lot of water. I drink at least 16 ounces, sometimes more, when I first wake up (before coffee time, very important!), following that I drink a few ounces short of a gallon per day throughout the day. It's not because I feel pressured by a goal to remain healthy, but because I'm thirsty - all the time. I just always want to drink more water. I don't even need it ice cold - I prefer it room temperature, as I can drink more without having to stop due to cold sensitivity.

I'm not diabetic, yes some other things have changed about me since those days, but the biggest thing is that I don't drink soda anymore. I drink very few diuretics, only coffee in the morning and rarely an 8 ounce cup of tea. I sometimes drink milk but I consider that food. I know it's "a drink", but I don't drink it with dinner, or when I'm thirsty, but as a source of satiation, almost like a snack. If I only drank when I was thirsty, I would still drink all the time. Before I made myself enjoy drinking water through sheer force of will, I would drink sodas and other non-water drinks when thirsty.

The thing about other drinks is that scientists have studied what "satiates our thirst" and have found that the brain sends "thirst quenched" signals to our brains before the consumed water has even managed to actually support any hydrating functions. Within the mouth and throat are systems that tell our brain we've had plenty to drink and are no longer thirsty. When we drink diuretics and all those drinks that we've always been told "always make you more thirsty," but feel like our thirst was actually quenched, we are suffering a negative side effect of this built in system of our bodies. The mouth and throat tell the brain we've quenched the thirst before the soda does anything. Once it begins being processed, we recognize that we are thirsty again, and drink more. The mouth and throat signals continue to trick us into thinking we are satiated when we will never become so. This is why people are so hellbent on justifying their tea and soda as "not making them more thirsty" - the thirst they cause is later, after you've forgotten you drank it, not to mention if you drink more you'll reset the cycle, making your mouth yet again tell your brain you're hydrated from that soda.

For perhaps even this reason alone, telling people who don't drink water to "only drink when they're thirsty" is terrible advice.

First, it's not the first step to being properly hydrated as a habit. People are notoriously bad at understanding their own body's needs in the first place. A person who regularly drinks things that aren't water isn't going to drink enough water if they "only drink water when they're thirsty," because they will - consciously and unconsciously - drink other things instead, saying, "I just had water, I can have a soda", tricking their brains into thinking the soda is actually doing anything valuable for them. I've heard people say, "I drink a bottle of water a day", as if that's enough, using it as justification for why they're drinking soda or something else instead. The fact of the matter is, the amount of water you need a day varies based on your body's needs, and if you are drinking soda, you're probably actually going to need more water overall.

The first step to being properly hydrated is to drink more water, all the time, even when you aren't thirsty. I saw an article attempt to argue that you'll become "over hydrated," from drinking water when you're not thirsty. This is absolute nonsense they came up with to try and make their point. Over hydration won't occur until you're drinking levels of water unimaginable to the transitioning-from-soda-dependent person. It also only happens when you drink too much too quickly, or have a condition that restricts your kidneys from removing the water fast enough. Don't chug a gallon of water to settle your water intake for the day. That's not even how it works. You need a steady consumption of water, as your body uses it and keeps using it. If you drink a gallon at once, your body will pee out the unneeded water as quickly as possible to stop you from being over hydrated, and then resume normal water usage. Then you'll then need more water later.

The "who is at risk of over hydration" list is extreme sport participants plus some people with medical conditions. The over hydration scare is nonsense, and for what purpose? Scaring people who want to be healthy into... drinking less water? For whose satisfaction? Honestly, that they even attempted to make this argument is offensive on several levels.

So we've established that "only drink when you're thirsty" is bad advice for the average person. It could possibly be decent advice if that person only drank water in the first place, but imagining a person in America who drinks only water and yet needs advice about how much water to drink is rather tough.

Being dehydrated is hard to tell. It causes headaches, dizziness, light headedness, weakness, fatigue, etc. The symptoms can be mild, indicating potentially deadly levels of dehydration if the problem isn't addressed. People go to the hospital all the time with these symptoms, fearing they have some terrible disease... but they just need more water. These people writing these, "drink when you're thirsty," articles are disconnected from the habits of the average person and the understandings these average people have of their own bodies. "Drink when you're thirsty" isn't advice you can be giving to people who are suffering from serious, potentially deadly dehydration more often than once in their life, and never once were able to tell that that was the problem. You trust these people to know to drink when they're thirsty? The "at least eight glasses a day" mantra, with its incredibly limited scope of usefulness, is infinitely better for the average person than "drink when you're thirsty". Let's please not make that the new mantra - people will be hospitalized for it. I'm not even being dramatic.

Secondly, for people like me, who are thirsty all the time, it's obviously invalid advice. I could not possibly drink water every time that I'm thirsty. For people like those extreme sport participants who are at risk of over hydration, it's also terrible advice. Looks like generalized advice is pretty bad for the individual person, whether it's eight glasses a day or not.

If you're the average Joe schmo who is not drinking enough water, drink when you're not thirsty. Drink water - drink it a lot. Be careful not to "overdo it", but be aware that overdoing it is practically impossible - for you. If you're not making an effort to drink more water as is, you're not going to overdo it. Some people do suddenly go hard on a new goal, so it's not an impossible risk, but if you're fighting yourself over that glass of water, you're not going to over hydrate - and you are probably dehydrated.

I crave water now when I'm thirsty, as I've stopped soda. I crave sweet things less, overall. People make arguments about how for example, they're "going to die anyway", "moderation is fine for things", "I enjoy it and I don't overdo it", etc. But it doesn't make it not bad for you. A slice of cake every once in awhile won't kill you, and it's enjoyable, but if you don't eat it, that's even better. If you're denying yourself and you want it, that sucks - but imagine not wanting it.  Imagine simply not being tempted by that cake and not needing to make excuses for yourself to indulge in something unjustifiably bad (nutritionally) for you.

I don't want sweets. There's no, "oh no I'm living such a bad life because I'm denying myself things I want and thus I am sad and feel hollow", or whatever nonsense. I don't want to eat candies and cakes all the time. Why eat them at all? The only reason is because you enjoy them - they have little benefit to you. Refined sugar in processed foods is the one thing that basically all professionals agree on as being entirely terrible for you. You can find conflicting studies on practically any food or nutrient, but not sugar. Sugary, processed food is the one thing that's always bad for you no matter what bias stunt you try to pull in your nutrition study. You could always eat something better for you and cut the sweets, but people want to make "you only live once wah wah" arguments. Yes, you only live once, so try to make the quality of that one life a little better by being properly hydrated and not sugar-poisoned.

I don't want the cake, and I'm not "just saying that" because I'm some kind of health nut. I eat bread, I put creamer in my coffee, and yes I do even eat some cake and sweets now and then, but I don't crave it and eat a far smaller serving than anyone would imagine. I often force myself to eat cake when it's offered as to not offend the host of whatever event I'm at - I'd much prefer a second helping of dinner. I don't suffer for not eating sweets. I don't walk through the snack aisle of the grocery store and pine after all the junk food. When I do eat candy or sweets, I'm appalled at how enormous the serving size is. If I eat both the snack cakes in one cellophane pack, I'm close to vomiting at how overly sweet it was. I've cut a zebra cake in half and put one and a half snack cakes back into the freezer. I cut the sugar added in my homemade sweets and even a pinch more flavored creamer in my coffee than I'm used to will ruin the whole cup for me.

I used to crave sweets more. It subsided nearly entirely once I stopped drinking soda.

That's an anecdote, yes. It may not be so straightforward for others. But what am I truly missing out on for not being sugar addicted? Writing a "DEBUNKING WATER!" article is the dumbest thing I've ever seen, intentionally trying to make people feel justified and self-righteous in the face of those crazy health nuts with their energy and stamina and not-constant headaches - what do they know? - while depriving themselves of a better life if they just drank more water - and perhaps specifically, less soda.

Water is not a cure-all, but it's the oil for our engine. You can run your car on low oil, but, well, not for long.

Cooking is Anti-Feminist

I read an article, critiquing another article about a study, about how cooking is anti-feminist. While the author of the article I read was a feminist, she disagreed with the concept of cooking being anti-feminist and pointed out good and true (and obvious) problems that were the actual problems with 'cooking' that the authors of the study were too narrow-focused to notice.

To set the stage I will state that while I still disagreed a lot with the author's view and understanding of certain concepts, that she was still able to understand many complex and true and obvious things. I'm not really responding to HER or her article, but rather the original concept of "something [like cooking] being anti-feminist because it can be hard".

The base concept of the study was that because of various roadblocks to cooking, it oppresses women specifically, and is therefore anti-feminist. The author correctly pointed out that those various roadblocks were actually the problem, as you are basically saying (for example) "low wage working mothers with no time to do anything don't have the resources or money to cook for their families, therefore cooking is anti-feminist." I should not have to dissect why this is poor argument.

However, what stuck out to me the most was the idea that, because some thing is hard to do under certain circumstances, it is bad. Or perhaps, doing it, and not enjoying it, means it is bad. Or even, wanting to be able to do it but not being able to, means it is bad. All of these concepts were attributed to 'cooking' as a whole.

Being able to cook for your family is good. If you are able to do so, buying ingredients to prepare food is cheaper and healthier (most of the time). Cooking with your children is good for their development for many reasons, not just that they would learn a skill, but children who help their parents cook are by and large less picky and more interested in eating different foods (which is good). Enjoying family meals together is a bonding activity and it is good. Large portions of cooking are good. There are cons, but by all measures, the pros are overwhelming - cooking for your family is good.

Now, to be clear, just because something is good doesn't mean you have to do it perfectly and constantly under all circumstances. But it would be folly to say cooking is not good just because it can be very hard to do. If it is difficult to cook for your family because of your circumstances, that doesn't make it not good. The problem is when you look at cooking - a good thing - and say, this is hard for me, so it is a bad thing. That would be like saying brushing your teeth is a bad thing because you are disabled, and using a toothbrush is very difficult. Brushing your teeth is still a good thing, it is just hard for you to do. So what should you do?

You should still believe cooking, and brushing your teeth, are good things. But if you cannot do them under your normal circumstances, you should find ways to do them. Perhaps unconventional ways, innovative, unexpected, new, unusual ways. Why is this not considered? People hear things, for example, like "fresh food is expensive," and look at something like zucchini, and go, "behold, I am vindicated, for a single zucchini is two entire dollars, thus healthy fresh food is expensive." Well, don't buy zucchini. There are other foods, just like there are other ways to do things.

Sure, not everyone is very clever, and being under enormous stress makes simple things harder. I'm not saying, "you are unskilled and stupid for not figuring out how to cook for your family." I am saying, most certainly, that if you have the time and energy to write an entire study critiquing cooking as an oppressive activity because it can be hard to do under certain circumstances, then you have plenty of creativity to figure out how to make cooking work for you under your circumstances. You have time to provide avenues for people to cook more easily and for less money, instead of attempting to tell them they should not cook. What do they do instead? They must eat. Not cooking for yourself is far more expensive, or if you go the cheap route, incredibly destructive. Poor diet will make everything else difficult, not just cooking. To try and dismantle cooking using the argument that it is oppressive is short-sighted.

It is this short-sightedness that truly plagues ideologies like feminism. The obvious is skirted around in order to classify it in feminist terms, when in reality, life's not like that. Some things are not that complicated. Feminism comes around and tries to complicate it, in order to vindicate women who say they do not like cooking because deep down, their real problem is that they want to be perceived a certain way or make a certain point. They don't truly have any beef with cooking, they have beef with concepts and views surrounding it. Instead of addressing those problems littered all around the border, they toss the whole thing out and dismiss it as oppression. This study was a step away from saying, eating is oppressive! It is useless to approach these issues this way.

On days where I feel too tired to cook three separate items in three separate vessels, knowing I have to clean them later, I find a way to cook all those ingredients together in the same pot. I cook extra of something one day, planning to use the remainder in another dish on the following day, like rice. I make several quarts of one food inside of a crock pot (incredibly common, easy to find cheap new and cheaper used, best investment you'll ever make if your main complaint is time) to eat for multiple days.

Just like the easy to learn fact that frozen vegetables are both cheaper and just as nutritious as fresh, there are an overwhelming number of ways to cook for your family under time constraints and unpredictability. The base argument that cooking is bad because certain lifestyles - chosen and unchosen - make it difficult is simply too narrowly focused.

These bizarre kinds of objections to wonderful things like cooking stem from other problems. I would never attempt to argue that it is not hard to cook from scratch while working full time with several children, but you can't look at good and arguably necessary things like, heaven's sake, cooking and eating food, and say, "this entire concept must be destroyed because it is hard." Everything is hard. Life is hard.

I began doing something that required more time and energy because the alternative was more expensive. I didn't stop doing something else or somehow find more time and energy to do this thing, I merely decided it had to be done because the monetary attribute was weighted more heavily than the time or energy attribute. I had some time and energy to spare, and needed to alleviate cost. Everything we do is a balancing act between time, energy, and costs. Money is, at least in my opinion, the more difficult one to stretch, as things have specific costs and you either have the money or you do not have the money. You can't need something for $10 and somehow stretch, through effort and force of will, $7 to purchase it. I can, however, perhaps wake up earlier, stay up a moment later. Simply barrel through sleep deprivation, actively force myself to overextend my personal resources, in order to use more energy than I have. I can work faster - expending more energy - to squeeze out extra time. I can't turn $7 into $10.

Some people cannot squeeze out extra energy. They may be at the entire end of their energy rope. They, personally, have to weigh their cost, energy, and time variables against each other and decide what needs to be done. Some people are at the end of all three ropes, and surely there is not much to do there except seek outside assistance. But if you are not at the literal end of your ropes, you cannot in good conscious sit there and say, "this thing that forces me to choose between my time, energy, and cost constraints and possibly utilize more of them than I currently have, is oppressive and must be dismantled." It's possible that some of those types of things could be better off going away, but - and I cannot stress this enough - making food to eat is not one of those things.