Scientists say eight glasses of water a day may be too much

25 comments
  1. > If people on average drink half a litre more than they need and you multiply that by 40 million adults in the UK, that means that we’re needlessly drinking and peeing 20 million litres of water that we have to supply.

    Forget the leaking pipes, now we’re drinking too much. Gods alive!

  2. From the headline I assumed this would be some story about how it could impact our health/weight

    But it’s about how we’re wasting water by drinking it?

    I know our society isn’t exactly where we wanted it to be, but I didn’t think we were at a point of being asked to ration our drinking water.

  3. I feel like it is irresponsible to have articles like this and not at least copy/paste a disclaimer explaining “you should always speak to a trained health professional” i.e. your GP

    And I mean the 8 glasses is an average.. not one size fits all

  4. It’s kind of worrying how official health advice can come from a couple of or just one study involving very few people as the ‘8 glasses a day’ seems to have been. It’s like a couple of years ago when they said about saturated fat and how it’s not actually that bad for you and the advice that it is was based on one flawed small sample study done in the 1970’s

  5. Most people don’t drink enough water though, so it’s less of an issue than we think from an environmental point of view. Drink for your activity level but even sedentary people are often dehydrated because they do not follow basic health advice.

  6. 8 glasses is much too much unless you do intense physical exercise.

    The original study that the 8 glasses was taken from was the total water that a human ingests on average including water contained in food. When they did the recommendation they failed to subtract what we get from food so now people think you have to drink 8 glasses a day. Really, you’re supposed to drink to thirst. All this bollocks about a prescribed amount of water makes zero sense.

    Sorry in advance to those who bought a gallon water vessel and have to make sure they drink the whole thing each day, who will now attack my post.

  7. Radio 4 did a documentary on this recently featuring a kidney specialist.

    There really isn’t a need to have a figure of how much water you should drink. If anything, people are over drinking.

    The specialist said to drink when thirsty (when your body tells you to).

    He also said they never really see cases where people aren’t drinking enough water.

    It’s essentially all a myth spouted by water companies and water bottle manufacturers.

    Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04nlkqj

  8. How about just have a drink when you feel thirsty? Is anyone out there actually counting their levels of water ingestion?

    “oh no, it’s almost time for bed and I’ve only had seven glasses today”

  9. I am a big fan of drinking a bit more water than your thirst tells you to do so. I’ve found it makes me feel more alert and energetic.

  10. What has gone wrong with the BBC?

    Their headlines are crafted to misinform the reader into click baiting, and yet they pay a “disinformation specialist” to criticise other news sources

  11. Who in their right mind drinks that many glasses of water in a day anyway? I don’t drink that many glasses in a month.

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