In the EU, Water Doesn't (Officially) Prevent Dehydration 815
New Kohath writes with this news from The Guardian: "Bottled water producers applied to the EU for the right to claim that 'regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration'. The health claim was reviewed by a panel of 21 scientists on behalf of the European Food Standards Authority. The application was denied, and now producers of bottled water are forbidden by law from making the claim. They will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the EU edict."
And in the US (Score:3, Funny)
Ketchup is a vegetable (even though a tomato is technically a fruit).
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
So's pizza. [nytimes.com]
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And in the US (Score:4, Interesting)
No more disgusting than gravy/cheese curds or mayonnaise on french fries. People like what they like. I personally put Sriracha sauce (Huy Fong), Chili Garlic Sauce (also Huy Fong), Frank's Red Hot/Tabasco or salsa on just about anything edible, sometimes to make things edible. Not all at once, whichever seems right for the dish in question. Ketchup on pizza could be good with the right toppings. Don't knock it till you try it.
Re:And in the US (Score:4, Funny)
No more disgusting than gravy/cheese curds or mayonnaise on french fries.
Ahhh, Poutine, one of the best things to come out of Quebec!
I lived there for about 6 months back in 1989, and it took me a couple of months before I tried it. mmmmmmmmmmm
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
No more disgusting than gravy/cheese curds or mayonnaise on french fries.
Hey americans, we invented fucking french fries. Don't tell us what we can put on them, yeah.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Informative)
Fruit is a biological term, vegetable is a culinary term. Tomatoes can be both, why does everyone have such a hard time with this?
(ketchup, on the other hand... is awesomeness but yes, Congress is completely bought and sold by all lobbies, including the processed food and frozen pizza lobbies)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Nix v. Hedden settled that case.
In favor of the tax greedy government, asyou might expect.
Tomatoes were ruled to be a vegetable.
And oddly enough, vegetables had higher taxes than fruits.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Informative)
That had nothing to do with government greed. It was the right ruling. Should the government tax tomatoes as vegetables? Well, you might say that they are a fruit, and vegetables are things like cucumbers, squash, peppers, eggplant, string beans, pea pods, corn, okra, right? Problem is, everything I just mentioned is also botanically a fruit (fruits that, for some strange reason, people don't embarrass themselves by pointing out that that they're botanical fruits like they do with tomatoes). Cucumbers and squash are pepos (which are actually a type of berry), corn (and wheat and rice) is a type of fruit called a caryopsis, peanuts and string beans are legumes, and eggplant and peppers are berries. Fruit has both a culinary AND scientific meaning. Culinary, it is a sweet part of the plant that is almost always a botanical fruit, but that does not imply that a botanical fruit is also a culinary fruit. Scientifically, milkweed pods, cotton pods, and those little helicopters that fall from maple trees are fruits. Chocolate covered cucumber sound good to you? What about tomato ice cream, or pea pod pie? No? That's because they're not fruits in the everyday speech. You're going to stop calling peanuts and almonds nuts (peanut is a legume and almond is a drupe) or stop calling potatoes root vegetables (they're tubers, which are stems), and no one is calling rice, peppers, or string beans fruits, so why this fixation on the fact that tomatoes are botanical fruits?
Vegetable has no scientific meaning, so it is perfectly reasonable to consider something a botanical fruit and a culinary vegetable. Just by mentioning the term, we know that we're speaking in culinary or horticultural terms, not pure botanical terms. Something can be a root and a vegetable (like carrots) a stem and a vegetable (like potatoes), a leaf and a vegetable (lettuce), a flower and a vegetable (broccoli), and things can be a botanical fruit and a vegetable too. Culinary fruits don't need to be a botanical fruit either. The best example is the strawberry. The actual fruits are the the little seeds on the outside (called achenes), whereas the culinary part is just the large swollen receptacle, which is a modified stem. I think botanists consider the whole thing, both the achenes and the receptacle to be the fruit, so that is a pretty weak example, but that should at least make you think about what a fruit really is. Historically, rhubarb was considered a fruit at times. However, if I gave you a cashew apple [wikimedia.org] (yes, every cashew nut has a fruit to go along with it) or if I gave you the 'fruit' of a native cherry or [wikipedia.org]Japanese raisin tree [wikipedia.org], you might not be able to tell that they aren't actually fruits. The lleuque [wikipedia.org] 'fruit' doesn't even come from an angiosperm (only angiosperms have fruit)! If any of those were commercially cultivated, what would we call them? Vegetables? Should we regulate something that in terms of cultivation and use is more similar to a cherry like a radish just because of some botanical nitpick? I don't think so.
So, if we were speaking strictly scientifically, we'd treat corn, chili peppers, and pea pods the same as apples, grapes, andbananas. But that'd be pretty darned stupid, right? That's why we don't do it. The government made the right call there. I imagine someone was just being a smartass to get out of some taxes.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, overall I agree with your post. Culinarily, a fruit is sweet and a vegetable savory. That's the big difference, and it's fine for something to be botanically a fruit and culinary a veggie. I just have a few issues with your list of "fruits." First, corn is iffy. There are botanical definitions that exclude it from being a fruit, as the fruit wall is virtually nonexistent. And peanuts? You've got to be kidding me. Yeah, sure, it's a fruiting plant, but you can't seriously tell me you eat the shell. It's an edible seed.
I mean, I get what you're saying, but the edible portion of those two plants are not botanically fruits.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Funny)
Culinarily, a fruit is sweet and a vegetable savory. That's the big difference
I think you need to add a qualifier to fruit "and grows above ground". Cause carrots, rutabaga and beets are all pretty sweet.
Then there are fruits like avocado and plantains, which don't even follow that rule.
My rule:
If your mother forced you to eat it, it was a vegetable.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
The government made the right call there. I imagine someone was just being a smartass to get out of some taxes.
I think that's the wrong response. Better response should be, why should the two categories be taxed at different rates? Another good question would be, why tax basic foods such as fruits and vegetables? I don't see the point in defending the government's position when their bad tax policy is the root cause of the scuffle.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Funny)
I think that's the wrong response. Better response should be, why should the two categories be taxed at different rates? Another good question would be, why tax basic foods such as fruits and vegetables?
You're obviously not from the U.S. We believe in a link between taxation and representation (See Boston Tea Party). Many people think this means that if you are taxed, you must be represented, but it works the other way too. Since the majority of people register to vote as "Fruits" (people with outlandish ideas and little respect for the status quo) or "Vegetables" (unexciting people who seem to have a level of brain activity on par with a cucumber) and each of those groups is already represented by its own political party, it only made sense to tax them. Of course, one group believes everyone should be taxed equally (flat tax) and the other group believes in taxing at different rates (tax the rich). This is a constant source of ongoing debate, but most people believe that both fruits and vegetables should be taxed. There is a third group, known as the "nuts," who believe no one should be taxed, but no one takes them or Ron Paul seriously -- they serve mostly as diversionary entertainment when we get tired of hearing the fruits and veggies bicker.
Thus endeth the lesson on American politics.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, the Oxford disagrees with your claim:
- OED [oxforddictionaries.com]
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
why does everyone have such a hard time with this?
Because there's a significant population of Slashdot that thinks words are things with single, hard definitions that never change and must conform to what they learned in science class.
For those of us that can see the box as a box, it's not that hard. For people stuck inside the box, they'll insist everyone else get inside their little box.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us prefer to go by the factual, scientific definitions of things instead of the make-believe magical fairy unicorn definitions that other people who don't understand the science and facts decide to call truth
And some of us aren't so egotistical as to actually believe the fantasy that the one set of arbitrary categories we happen to be emotionally invested in is "true" or "real."
ALL categorization is arbitrary. Categorization is a tool, and can be used in whatever way a person damn well pleases. Just because YOU happen to find one use less useful, does NOT make it worse. Worse for your purposes, perhaps, but not necessarily for anyone else's.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us prefer to go by the factual, scientific definitions of things instead of the make-believe magical fairy unicorn definitions that other people who don't understand the science and facts decide to call truth[...] Water prevents dehydration, because hydration equates to intake of water. By definition. By fact. By common sense.
Do you really know what you're talking about? Because it sounds to me like you actually prefer to go by your own "make-believe magical fairytale unicorn definitions".
Hydration absolutely does not "equate" to intake of water, despite the magical mystery powers of "common sense". There are in fact three types of dehydration: Hypertonic, which is the only kind you've ever heard of; hypotonic, which is a loss not of water but of electrolytes; and isotonic, which is a loss of both water and electrolytes. A hypotonic or isotonic patient could be given litres of bottled water without recovering, since they also need electrolytes (notably sodium).
If you don't believe me, Wikipedia is of course your friend, have a look [wikipedia.org] for yourself.
I advise you to remember that science and common sense are rarely on speaking terms, and that people who live in make-believe magical fairy unicorn land should not throw stones.
Sorry, but it isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
You can whine all you like about how it should be, that isn't how it is. Natural language is an evolving thing. It changes all the time, and in different regions and so on. I don't care if that upsets your geek sensibilities that is how they actually work.
You have to deal with the real world, and in the real world, words have multiple meanings and those meanings shift with time. Like it or not, it is how things are.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, some numbers have changed their value. "Billion" (and long-scale [wikipedia.org] friends) was redefined in the UK in 1974 (for most uses) to be 10^9 instead of 10^12.
Even mathematical definitions are not absolute. They change, or were obscure to begin with. An annoying example is "natural numbers". Some people include 0, some people include 1. Worse, many people aren't aware of the ambiguity when they use the term. "Ring" has a similar ambiguity. Does the algebraic structure have a 1? Can 1 = 0? Is it commutative? It all depends on what the author is interested in. Hopefully they let you know, but sometimes they don't, and you have to figure out whether these extra properties are being used from context.
Another example from theoretical physics is the term "direct product" when applied to vector spaces. Some physicists use that term in the same way a mathematician would use "tensor product" while others actually use "tensor product", reserving "direct product" for what a mathematician would call a "direct product". As far as I'm aware, there is no ambiguity in the mathematical community about these terms. A physics professor of mine preferred "direct product" in the ambiguous sense. When I asked him why, he told me that tensors were scary to some people, so he wanted to avoid the term if possible. Mathematicians, as a rule, are rather unsympathetic to emotional concerns, so this isn't a very good argument for getting the mathematical community to use the ambiguous definition.
These examples are all annoying, but that's life. Language is the imperfect result of evolution, just like humans are. Evolution usually makes something only "good enough" (examples: the ending of the words "cough", "though", and "rough"; the existence of mental disorders). Even in highly technical disciplines where words often do have immutable meaning, they don't always. The "ring" example is particularly good, since the ambiguity is actually helpful. One can state at the outset "the term 'ring' will denote a unital commutative ring where 1 != 0" without clashing with established notation. The annoyances it generates are from sloppy authors and are typically minor anyway. "Direct product" is rather similar, even if it caused me a few minutes of confusion once ("what? no, that equation is just plain wrong! At the least, those relations severely limit the structure of this object, probably to the point of uselessness! Oh wait. Those are tensor product relations, even though they said direct product. Huh. What a strange convention."). Words change all the time in response to societal factors, and that's not always a bad thing.
Re:And in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
So ... is 3 a magical number? Prime? Fermat prime? Mersenne prime? Lucase prime? Stern prime? Unique prime? Odd? A root? Natural? Positive? Heegner number?
Interestingly enough, 3 is all of these things, yet mathematics works perfectly well.
And when I say "works" I don't mean it has a job, and when I say "well" I don't mean a hole in the ground where you retrieve water.
And by "mean" I do not refer to the statistical mean, nor how something is treated.
Brawndo will take care of that (Score:5, Funny)
After all, it has Electrolytes!
Re:Brawndo will take care of that (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, second post and you already beat me to it! So then, to provide something useful to the thread, I give you:
THE THIRST MUTILATOR! [youtube.com]
Re:Brawndo will take care of that (Score:4, Funny)
Once Again... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
yeh, here bottle water is about twice as expensive as the heavily taxed gasoline, and the tap water is generally from deep underground filtered through soil for something like 60 years so it is better in every measureable way. bottled water companies will do everything they can to sell the idea that drinking they stuff will make you healthy, sporty, rich, successfull ....
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Funny)
Bottled water. You can't explain that!
Sure we can. Have you ever read the label on a bottle of EVIAN water backwards?
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know, I'm sure bottled water companies just wanted to use it as a misleading selling point and marketing. All other kinds of drinks prevent dehydration too, and tap water does too. Compared to countries where you can't actually drink tap water, the bottled waters are seriously overpriced here and they try to sell them by stating how they have minerals, are more healthier and so on.. All kinds of misleading marketing tactics. This decision only prevented the companies for using yet another misleading phrase.
It's a fair amount of this. A while ago I was looking into why all of the zinc remedies for colds were homeopathic, but at reasonable dilutions (1:10, and 1:100). I came up with information that in the US you cannot claim that something is intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease unless it is a "drug" as controlled by the FDA. What does the FDA say is a drug? Well, either something listed in the US Pharmacopeia, or in the Homeoapathic Pharmacopeia. As a result, since zinc acetate, and zinc gluconate are only "herbal/mineral supplements" they cannot be listed in the USP, and thus cannot be advertised as diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease (even zinc deficiency). However, since the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia has recently listed the zinc treatments for the treatment and prevention of colds, if a manufacturer actually makes the substance in accordance with Homeopathic law, they can actually call it a drug, and advertise it as treating and preventing colds. (Why don't wall Homeopathic "drugs" make these claims? The FDA still requires the homeopathic "drugs" to have scientific evidence to support a claim to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent a disease. Most don't, zinc compounds do.)
So, as a result of reading all this stuff, I picked up my Iron supplements, which I take for iron deficient anemia, and sure enough on the label it says: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease." Yes, my iron supplements can't even advertise that they treat, cure, or prevent iron deficiency. The very substance required to cure the deficiency cannot be sold with the claim that it can CURE that deficiency. Why? Same as above, it is an herbal/mineral supplement, and as such is not a "drug" and so it cannot be advertised to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
As water is a food, and not a drug, the US system would come up with the exact same ruling.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
The FDA has limited resources, they can't evaluate every substance and claim. One of their criteria is possible danger to the public, for example all invasive devices and drugs must be reviewed. The greater the potential danger, the more extensive the review process.
Homeopathics were "grandfathered in" to the FDA system which gives them their (limited) claim rights.They don't have to prove anything. Since homeopathics pose no danger to the public (as well as arguably no benefit), the fact that the claims are basically false advertising isn't an important enough consequence to the state of public health that the FDA will get involved.
In the case of the claim about water, its actually false and potentially dangerous from a medical point of view. Drinking water can only prevent the onset of some types of dehydration, since its not electrolyte balanced. For example if your kid is vomiting a lot from the flu, which is definitely a case where they are at risk of developing dehydration, they should be administered something like Pedialyte (under medical supervision).
Re:Once Again... (Score:4)
Interesting. I've often wondered what was supposed to be "homeopathic" about ColdEeze lozenges.
Apparently we needed a government agency to keep people from selling radium elixirs out of covered wagons at the county fair. Fine, whatever. But the present-day FDA, like other three-letter agencies such as the DEA, is just plain berserk with bureaucratic power. It's almost as if government agencies always attempt to expand their scope, or something.
While I won't particularly argue with you on merit, the FDA is just following logical conclusions. If we allowed herbal/mineral supplements to make medical claims then cranberry juice could be marketed as "helps prevents UTIs!", and all sorts of other nonsense, where while it is technically true, the stuff is not medical, and shouldn't be sold as if it were a medical drug/device. Limiting the requirement to be able to advertise to approved medical drugs and devices with scientific studies proving efficacy makes sense, and is perfectly reasonable and rational... even if it does occasionally lead to the occasional totally brain fart stupid statements being disallowed because "water prevents dehydration" is a medical claim.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
My understanding (which may be wring mind you) is that iron supplements indeed don't do anything to cure or prevent iron deficiency. To be effective, the iron has to be absorbed by the body. That is rather tricky with iron, and simply taking something with iron in it isn't enough.
There is also another point here, which is that using iron supplements to cure or prevent iron deficiency would be very easy to clinically test. The reason the FDA hasn't approved of it as a drug is almost certainly because the studies have been done, and the supplement was not shown to be effective.
No. Ferrous Sulfate (the "active" ingredient in my iron supplement) has been shown to be able to treat iron-deficiency. Your skepticism is reasonable and warranted with herbal supplements, but in this case does not apply.
Re:Once Again... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the EFSA should have smacked them a little harder, and required that the bottles carry a warning that excessive consumption of this product can lead to a fatal condition called hyponatremia.
For most consumers of bottled water though, they just see their wallet shrink unnecessarily. Most bottle water is straight from the city water supply with a little salts added to for taste. It also happens that the salts tend to increase your thirst and appetite rather than quench it.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
For most consumers of bottled water though, they just see their wallet shrink unnecessarily.
That's true in the UK, but I'm not sure how true it is for the rest of the EU. I do know that I've stayed in parts of Brittany where the tap water was bad for you (too much nitrate fertiliser runoff); I know that here in Spain tap water contains so much chlorine that it affects the taste; and I know that at 10 cents per litre I spend scarcely any money on bottled water.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole article was just seething with affected indignation, the kind of blood-shot anti-Europe sentiment that got such a rightful whacking on QI. The only bit of sanity is at the very end of the article, added almost as an afterthought:
So, everyone calm down. The bottled water companies wanted to put a dubious medical claim on their bottles, and when they got caught because contrary to their expectations it was investigated by actual scientists, they decided to run to the press for sympathy, knowing that Britain's yellow journalism doesn't let facts get in the way of writing a sensationalist story.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Interesting)
People who haven't seen that epode of QI can find the relevant part here [youtube.com]. It brilliantly exposes the nutbaggery that poses for "euro skepticism" in the UK press (also elsewhere but the UK takes the cake.)
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
The British press loves running with EU-hating politicians and as a result is just as stupid.
The article even continued the bent banana and cucumber lie, these were never banned from sale but produce with abnormal curvature could for easy of packaging and transport not be offered as Class 1.
What this article conveniently leaves out is the bottling companies wanted a claim insinuating BOTTLED water is the best / only way to combat dehydration.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you can drink all the water you want and still be dehydrated, if that water lacks the supplements your body is craving (it just tries to get rid of the water quicker rather than retaining it).
So no, their claim is not 100% accurate and can lead to permanent damage.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems that they actually convened a panel of scientists and determined that the statement was false.
Dehydration (the clinical, medical term), has multiple forms (e.g. hypertonic, hypotonic, isotonic). Dehydration is caused by factors such as burns, vomiting, diarrhea, methamphetamine use, diseases such as cholera, yellow fever, diabetes. Some of those conditions are rather serious--if a doctor thinks a patient is at risk of developing dehydration due to a medical complication, they don't simply give them water to drink, they administer the proper balance of water to electrolytes depending on the condition.
If the bottled water manufacturers had requested a more accurate statement, it would have been so full of technical jargon that they wouldn't be useful as a marketing tag line.
For example Pedialyte is basically just bottled water plus electrolytes, and it is advertised as follows "Use Pedialyte oral electrolyte solution under medical supervision for the dietary management of dehydration due to diarrhea and vomiting."
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
You *can* say it is incorrect, in most cases.
In fact, water overconsumption can easily lead to hyponatremia. It would be more correct to say "Steady, adequate freshwater intake throughout the course of the day curbs the likelihood of hypernatremia, a form of dehydration. Note that in a balanced diet, a significant portion of the body's water and sodium requirements come from food. Note that fruit juices, or a combination of fresh fruit and freshwater, meets the body's needs for water and sodium near-optimally. Note that isotonia, the excessive loss of body fluid, such as through diarrhea or vomiting, is a type of dehydration best treated by electrolyte solutions like Gatorade or Pedialyte, or parenterally via a 0.9% saline drip in severe cases. Note that hypovolemia, the excessive loss of body fluid typically through excessive bleeding, should be treated with medical care. Also note that rapid intake of freshwater over a short period of time is not as effective as a sustained intake throughout the day, as sudden rises in body water content are simply filtered by the kidneys in healthy individuals. Repeating this rapid intake behavior excessively can lead to hyponatremia, a form of dehydration, or, in more serious cases, hypovolemia, a condition related to dehydration that requires medical attention. In individuals with compromised excretory function, rapid water intake may lead to severe hyponatremia, a form of dehydration that requires medical attention, or a more severe condition of hypervolemia characterized by a swelling of the limbs known as peripheral edema or more severe and life-threatening complications, particularly in individuals in poor health or with poor diets or diets lacking in protein. Greatly excessive and sustained intake of freshwater combined with excessive perspiration may continue past hyponatremia to the point of water intoxication, a medical crisis that may cause brain damage or death."
But, I guess that doesn't have quite the same ring to it, eh? ;) "brain damage or death" is probably one of the potential side effects that bottled-water manufacturers want to list on their products... heh.
Note, IANAMP (==medical professional); I just study medicine (and mostly neuropathy and neurosurgery, at that) as a hobby, so please feel free to correct the above.
Re:Once Again... (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to re-post - all the carriage returns were stripped. I forgot to add HTML. It reads better with some whitespace.
I'm going to try to to untangle some if the above...
Some guy somewhere once said that you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day to maintain health. Turns out to be nonsense. For those of us with intact thirst centers in the brain (pretty much everyone reading this, for example), drinking when you are thirsty is all you need. Your body will tell you when you need more liquid by using the thirst mechanism. There are exceptions, as there is a lag before thirst is triggered, so on a hot day when you're exercising aggressively, you can get "dehydrated" and not get thirsty in time to do anything about it, but this is rare, and recent evidence tells us that hydrating aggressively, even in marathons, is overkill.
The jumble of hyponatremia, hypernatremia, hypertonic, hypotonic, hypovolemia, hypervolemia, isotonia, etc is maybe worth clearing up, although this will be interesting to precisely nobody. Some of the concepts are almost right.
"hyper" = too much, "hypo" = too little, "iso" = equal.
"volume" is the quantity of fluid (any fluid, technically) in the system.
"natr*" = sodium in the system.
"-emia" = in the blood.
"tonia" = concentration.
So, hypovolemia = low volume of fluid in the blood (hypo, vol, emia) Isotonia = equal concentration (in the medical context, meaning concentrations of a solute equivalent to those found naturally in blood). If you drink excessive fluids over an extended time, you overwhelm the kidneys' ability to maintain normal sodium concentrations in the blood, and you end up with hyponatremia. Drinking excessive fluids is usually called "psychogenic polydipsia," which is med-speak for drinking too much water because your brain is bad. The hyponatremia is potentially fatal, and often causes confusion, among other symptoms. Note that it does not cause (at least immediately) hypovolemia - the quantity of fluid in the system is adequate or high, it's the composition of that fluid that's troublesome.
In this case, one could say that the composition of the blood is hypotonic - there are fewer solutes (particularly sodium) in the blood than normal. This is treated by limiting fluids (reducing solvent, and allowing the kidneys to recover and restore balance), &/or by increasing sodium intake. Pepperoni pizza is a great solution (not kidding - my favorite nephrology professor used to prescribe exactly that). Hypertonic saline is reserved for emergencies. The blood is usually about 0.9% sodium, so a 3x concentrated version of that - typically 3% saline - can be given parenterally (via IV [intravenous], for those of us scoring at home). This is a dangerous treatment, as the brain is susceptible to dangerous/fatal swelling if hyponatremia is corrected too quickly ("cerebropontine myelinolysis," if I remember correctly - I'm a cardiologist, and I haven't thought about this stuff in a long time).
Not drinking enough fluid results in hypovolemia (commonly called "dehydration"). Usually the sodium levels in the blood measure high ("hypernatremia"), although it's not due to too much solute - it's due to too little solvent. The treatment is to replete fluids (volume), either with a a straw and some water, or with IV hydration. Usually 1/2 NS (saline that's hypotonic compared to normal blood, in this case 0.45%) or even normal (isotonic, 0.9%) saline.
The rest of the parent's post is mostly on target. Sorry for pedantry.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no, it doesn't. Not without intake of minerals.
Basically, The decision was completely right: some marketing arsehole decided to put on his product a claim that is not technically exactly wrong but largely irrelevant (should people be l to put "asbestos-free" on their product?) And the EU decided that no, you cannot do that, because misinformation is still frowned upon, there.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does water hydrate the body or not?
Bottled water can, when combined with other circumstances, hydrate your body. It can also kill you in other circumstances (for example, if you drink lots of it while sweating a lot).
Therefore, it is invalid to claim that it will hydrate you, when in reality it will only hydrate you in some situations.
The claim wasn't "when combined with yada yada water will hydrate you", it was just "water will hydrate you". And therefore, it is misleading.
Just because "common sense" says that water will hydrate you doesn't mean common sense is true.
Re:Once Again... (Score:4, Interesting)
Misleading point? Does water hydrate the body or not?
No, at least not adequately: if you are actually dehydrated (rather than simply thirsty), then just drinking water will not fix the problem. To quote wikipedia, "[p]lain water restores only the volume of the blood plasma, inhibiting the thirst mechanism before solute levels can be replenished.[17]" If a body is dehydrated, you need an isotonic drink. We've known this just about forever, and this is why you don't give pure water to a diarrhoea sufferer: it'll actually just make their problem *worse*. You mix appropriate quantities of electrolytes (e.g. to the recipe here [webmd.com]).
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
Bear in mind that we're certainly looking at a translation of what the actual advertising claim was, and possibly a biased one. There's this [youtube.com] Nestle PureLife water commercial to consider. In it, a bunch of girls on a soccer team run up to their coach and are handed sports drinks and the coach tells them to "drink up [they're] losing a lot of water out there", and one of the girls asks why, if they're losing water, they don't just drink water. The coach has a dumbfounded expression for a moment, then takes the sports drinks back, and hands out Nestle PureLife water instead. The voiceover then says that nothing hydrates like water.
The medically correct answer to the little girls question is that, when exercizing, you lose salts and carbohydrates as well as water. Proper rehydration replaces those as well. Given that the commercial is presenting what amounts to (potentially fatal in extreme conditions) medical advice, it amounts to false advertising. In the United States, it's clear that the government just doesn't care about false advertising any more, but in the EU, they actually take consumers being lied to by corporations in the name of profit seriously.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
In the United States, it's clear that the government just doesn't care about false advertising any more
Wow, you are very misinformed. Example 1. [washingtonpost.com] Example 2. [fashionista.com] Example 3. [consumeraffairs.com] Example 4. [consumeraffairs.com] Example 5. [latimes.com] All this year (most in the last month), all from the FTC, all just a small fraction of recent efforts. There are also several other federal agencies and at least 50 state agencies that go after false advertising.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
Thankfully, common sense, just like old wives tales, are not allowed as a basis for making medical claims. In order to make a medical claim, you have to get approval, after having performed 3 phases of trials. A process which will typically take around 10 years. And the trials involve testing against a control. I'd suggest that the most reasonable control against which to test bottled water is water. And I'd further suggest that the bottled water companies would be wasting their time doing that, because it's going to show that their product is no better at reducing the chances of dehydration.
There's no problem at all with bottled water companies claiming their product quenches thirst - that's not a medical claim. And everybody would understand exactly what they mean by that. But they are quite rightly prevented from trying to bamboozle people with disingenuous medical claims.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Informative)
(If you look at the date on the document I just linked to, you'll notice that this was all published in February, which makes it remarkable that so many journalists happened to leap on this story at the same time, completely independently of each other, without anyone copying what anyone else did or churnalizing each other in any way whatsoever).
So what about the actual claim? Well you can read the EU's ruling here (PDF) [europa.eu], and the first thing to note is that this isn't really a rule so much as a piece of advice, which member states are free to interpret as they wish.
...The specific health claim tested is outlined in the ruling:
The regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration and of concomitant decrease of performance.
The claim wasn't submitted for a genuine product, but was created as a deliberate 'test' exercise by the two professors, who were apparently already unhappy with the European Food Standards Authority. The panel were well aware of it's absurdity too, noting drily that "the proposed risk factors," the conditions addressed by the hypothetical product, in this case water loss, "are measures or water depletion and thus are measures of the disease (dehydration)."
Leaving that aside, there are two major problems with the claim: drinking water doesn't prevent dehydration, and drinking-water doesn't prevent dehydration.
Firstly, "regular consumption" of water doesn't reduce the risk of dehydration any more than eating a pork pie a day reduces the risk of starvation. If I drink half a pint of bottled water while running through a desert in the blistering sun, I'll still end up dehydrated, and if I drink several bottles today, that won't prevent me from dehydrating tomorrow. The key is to drink enough water when you need it, and you're not going to get that from any bottled water product unless it's mounted on a drip.
Secondly, dehydration doesn't just mean a lack of water, or 'being thirsty'; electrolytes like sodium are important too. If salt levels fall too far, the body struggles to regulate fluid levels in the first place. That's why hospitals use saline drips to prevent dehydration in patients who can't take fluids orally, and why people with diarhhoea are treated with salt-containing oral rehydration fluids. Presumably the next big investigation at the Express will expose the shocking waste of NHS money on needless quantities of saline solution, when jolly old tap water would work just as well.
So the ruling seems pretty sensible to me, or at least as sensible as a ruling can be when the claim being tested is vexatious in the first place. It's accurate advice, and it prevents companies selling bottled water from making exaggerated claims for their products, which is a good thing. They even have the support of the British Soft Drinks Association, who tweeted just as this piece was going live with the following statement:
The European Food Safety Authority has been asked to rule on several ways of wording the statement that drinking water is good for hydration and therefore good for health. It rejected some wordings on technicalities, but it has supported claims that drinking water is good for normal physical and cognitive functions and normal thermoregulation.
It's also an great opportunity to challenge received wisdom, and to make the point that keeping the human body hydrated is about much more than just drinking tap water when you're thirsty. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of journalists are more interested in promoting second-hand hysteria than informing their readers. Which is a bit sad.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Being that a committee of scientists and health experts found that the claim was false, instead blindly thinking they were wrong and my common sense was right, I looked deeper into the article and tried to find exactly why these people thought there was an issue with the claim.
The problem with the claim, it turns out, is that dehydration is a symptom, not a disease. In a lot of cases it's caused by simply too little of a water intake, but not all. There are several diseases and conditions that cause dehydration and drinking more water will not help in the slightest. The claim is identical to claiming that taking ibuprofen regularly can help reduce the risk of a headache (which is clearly not the case).
Perhaps when a committee of scientific experts make a formal statement about something that you disagree with, perhaps you should consider the following. Is it more likely that you are right or a group of educated individuals that study the field? I find it incredibly arrogant and egregiously wrong to think that it is more likely that you are correct. Next time question your "common sense" when it is challenged by experts, especially when it is something you don't know much about.
Re:Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably not your latter point, many of the bottled water cmpanies are soda companies.
I'm always amazed that the Soda bottlers managed to take their product, leave out the flavoring, sugar and carbonation and then sell it to consumers at a higher $/ounce price.
Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Informative)
...before we jump to the "EU makes dumb decision" conclusion as usual. Sellers of bottled water wanted to use that phrase as a selling point for bottled water. The EU decided that you could get the same from other sources of fluids. It may surprise some US people, but in a lot of areas you can actually drink tap water here...
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Funny)
The times I have been in Europe drinking tap water led to dehydration.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Funny)
Water doesn't come from a keg.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Insightful)
>The EU decided that you could get the same from other sources of fluids.
France was behind this.
En France, we drink wine in place of water.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Funny)
France was behind this.
En France, we drink wine in place of water.
Well.....that certainly explains the past 230 years of French history.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Insightful)
"your competition can do it just as well as you can" is a bullshit reason to deny a claim.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Informative)
Carbohydrates may help prevent starvation.
Actually, no, you cannot make that claim in the US either. It is a claim of ability to treat, cure, or prevent a disease (starvation), and only drugs that have been shown effective can advertise medical claim. Carbs are not a drug, therefore they cannot be marketed as preventing starvation. (It's a nice thought though, that the USA would allow such "deceptive" advertising.)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There can no greater lie than a literal truth. (Score:5, Informative)
But ... but ... look in the dictionary. Dehydration is *defined* as a lack of water.
Which dictionary?
And defined for what purpose?
What the EU is saying is that claims of medical benefits -- expressed or implied -- must not be framed in a way that can mislead the buyer.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, dehydration, as applies to your body, requires that water go to the right places and stay there. JUST drinking water will not necessarily do that. You need other electrolytes, primarily salt, as well.
The EU was right. Keep medical claims off products that are not specifically intended for treatment.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't. They said that bottled water makers can't use that to advertise their products. Since a label like that is likely to make less intelligent people think that it has an additive making it more effective than other sources, not allowing them to do so makes a lot of sense to me. They did the right thing.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody asked about your political prejudices. Does bottled water prevent dehydration, or doesn't it?
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Insightful)
Does bottled water prevent dehydration, or doesn't it?
It depends.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Insightful)
No, the phrase they used implied no such thing. That is something that some people here are making up, for reasons that remain obscure.
To get three statements in two short sentences wrong seems to be a new record. You even know that the reasons aren't obscure, so that one is a bold lie.
The phrase is "bottled water", and "bottled" is a qualifier. Bottled water != water, it's a specific subset.
That makes it misleading, because it is not bottled water that can prevent dehydration, but water. It's misleading in the same way as if you said that men who drink bottled water have a higher risk of heart attack than the human average. It's technically true, but the key word is men and the qualifier is a red herring.
Note that even in the US, the FDA may strike down on deliberately misleading marketing. Which is why you may read that eating five fruits a day is recommended, but won't read that eating five Del Monte bananas a day is recommended.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Interesting)
The mind boggled when I moved to the US and saw that Coca-Cola cans were prominently labeled "low sodium", and Kellog's Corn Flakes are marked as "*FAT FREE*" (yes, including asterisks).
What's next? Low radioactivity Hershey bars and sugar free eggs?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water. He said: âoeThe EU is saying that this does not reduce the risk of dehydration and that is correct. âoeThis claim is trying to imply that there is something special about bottled water which is not a reasonable claim.â
Re:Meta Statements (Score:5, Insightful)
In order for "regular consumption of significant amounts of water" to "reduce the risk of development of dehydration", it would need to do so beyond the baseline risk. That baseline isn't "drink nothing at all". It's "drink what you normally do". And the amount of fluid that people normally drink is sufficient to prevent dehydration. Drinking a bunch of water adds absolutely nothing, because unless there's something very wrong with you, you already take in enough fluid to stay healthy.
The implication of the statement is that if you don't regularly drink a bunch of water, you might get sick. That's a lie.
Are you sure you're not the one failing the "Turning" test here? Flying into a rage at the slightest provocation and hurling around insults is not a sign of a deep and thoughtful mind.
Re:Stupid counter (Score:4, Interesting)
You'd think that eating is something people would have about as much experience in. Yet you get to see the most harebrained claims on every pack of crap that are either simply not true (like the claim of "no MSG" in soups containing yeast extract) or that are, like in this case, implied by the nature of the product (like the low-carb meat and lard and the low fat bread). Hell, I've even see the claim of "zero calories" on bottled water, to stay on topic.
This is just plain silly. Yet it sells, it seems. If it didn't, if people would consider their intelligence insulted, it wouldn't, would it?
The claim that bottled water prevents dehydration is misleading. The ban doesn't imply that bottled water can't do that. The reason is not that the statement was untrue. Only that it's misleading. The ban is about them not being allowed to say that their source of fluids was in any way superior to other sources when it comes to the question whether they prevent hydration.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Informative)
I've been all over the U.S. (well, almost all) and while you can drink the tap water pretty much anywhere, I wouldn't say it's necessarily refreshing.
Keep in mind that in most homes 'tap water' really means water that's already gone through Brita or other filters in the first place.
Good thing, too, because without the filter the water in many states tastes very much of chlorine.
That said, the bottled water thing is still a scam and a major factor in street / park / water streams pollution - from the production of the bottles down to the people discarding of them inappropriately. Why so many Americans put up with this is beyond me.
I wouldn't call for a ban either, though. Having bottled water around can be a good thing (e.g. in case of emergencies or just not having any water come into the house due to burst mains pipe).. but for the average thirst quenching? ridiculous
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:4, Informative)
Not true; they can mess with the disinfecting chemicals.
Most of the disinfection chemicals do exactly that: disinfect. They have very little effect on taste or odor problems. Chemicals such as powdered activated carbon or potassium permanganate can be added to try to combat undesirable tastes, odors, and colors in the water, but they're costly and not terribly effective. Since controlling taste, odor, and color are all secondary standards [epa.gov] according to the EPA, water treatment processes don't typically spend too much money trying to perfect the taste of their water. As I said, this isn't new; GGP is just used to the flavor of bottled water now.
Philadelphia, for instance, adds enough chlorine that the tap water burns your throat going down.
I very much doubt it. The EPA regulates chlorine residuals in drinking water [epa.gov]. Adding too much chlorine would be expensive and serve little useful purpose in addition to making the water unpalatable; additionally, if free chlorine is used, it can create harmful disinfection by-products. 2-4 PPM chlorine is typical for a disinfection residual. A quick internet search didn't provide any information about high levels of chlorine in Philadelphia's drinking water.
Other municipalities use chloramines rather than straight chlorine, which produces a different taste.
Free chlorine tastes like chlorine; water treated with chloramines doesn't taste like chlorine. I am well familiar with this fact. However, the quality of water produced by one municipality wouldn't vary based on chlorination/chloramination unless it switched from one to the other, and municipalities don't change their treatment process that often. The taste of water between different municipalities will vary, but that's to be expected.
Re:Let's be accurate here (Score:5, Insightful)
It is literally true that water prevents dehydration, but the implication of the statement is that given a person with a normal diet, adding water to the diet reduces the risk of dehydration. Which is false because a normal diet is already enough to prevent dehydration and adding a bottle of water brings no extra benefit.
But why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as stupid as rules requiring nutritional labeling on bottled water (at least here in the US). I kid you not: ... Calcium: *, ...
Calories: 0, Fat: 0 mg, Protein: 0 mg, Carbohydrates: 0 mg, Vitamin A: 0,
(* Not a significant source of these nutrients.)
Re:But why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do water vendors feel the need to state the obvious... like water cures thirst?
Because:
"(Plastic-)Bottled water contain trace amounts of toxic chemicals and may mess with your hormonal system" doesn't sound as good? =P ... whatever it's true.
"Bottled water ruins the oceans"
"Bottled water is ruining the environment"
"Bottled water is causing global warming"
"Bottled water is people!"
"Caveat in paragraph 19" (Score:5, Informative)
“This claim is trying to imply that there is something special about bottled water which is not a reasonable claim.”
Re:"Caveat in paragraph 19" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:"Caveat in paragraph 19" (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, according to the original decision [europa.eu], it is not not about bottled water, but (any) water in general.
However, as far as I understand, this conclusion was not reached because water would not prevent dehydration, but because they don't think dehydration is a disease. Which kind of makes sense – dehydration could be a symptom of a disease, but it is not a disease in itself. And the applicant asked a panel that verifies claims about products reducing the risk of a disease to verify a claim about a medical condition that –the board concluded– was not disease, so the board rejected the claim (or actually concluded [direct quote]: "The Panel considers that the proposed claim does not comply with the requirements for a disease risk reduction claim ...")
The Telegraph (Score:5, Informative)
Look, people, this is The Telegraph. They are incredibly biased and unprofessional when it comes to the EU. They will happily lie about anything if it makes the EU look bad.
Anything they say about the EU is pretty much guaranteed to be garbage. Please don't encourage this kind of dishonesty by giving them pageviews.
Re:The Telegraph (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Telegraph (Score:5, Informative)
Doesn't matter though, they've already achieved their goal here. A bunch of people came by Slashdot, saw the headline, and now subconsciously think slightly worse of the EU. Truth doesn't matter even the slightest bit in our society. All that matters is how often and how broadly you can push your lies.
Here you go. (Score:5, Informative)
The original decision. [europa.eu]
Re:Here you go. (Score:4, Insightful)
And I infer, perhaps incorrectly, from
from the decision that The Panel are basically saying "water loss in tissues isn't a risk factor for dehydration, it is dehydration".
Re:Here you go. (Score:4, Funny)
That's pretty much how I read it, too. They're saying it's equivalent to saying something like, "Staying still will reduce the risk of changing position." What are the precise risk factors that could cause you to change position? "Movement."
The U.S. Surgeon General has determined... (Score:5, Funny)
House protects pizza as a vegetable (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/11/18/us/life-us-usa-lunch.html?scp=1&sq=House%20protects%20pizza&st=cse [nytimes.com]
Ok, ok I know that we're talking about Republicans here but still it shows stupidity is rampant on both sides of the Atlantic!
Not submitted by bottled water producers (Score:5, Informative)
Someone at the Guardian [guardian.co.uk] wrote about this. It was not submitted by bottled water manufacturers:
Now, the ruling from the EU says that the application failed to comply with Article 14 of Regulation 1924/2006, which states "It is necessary to ensure that the
substances for which a claim is made have been shown to have a beneficial nutritional or physiological effect".
I'm guessing that the point where this application tripped up is that they didn't suggest how much water or how often would be beneficial and apparently didn't provide any evidence for the claim, so they haven't actually shown it is beneficial as required by Article 14.
Water is for washincg (Score:4, Funny)
asdf (Score:4, Insightful)
This is more "we corporations wanna advertise our product as having medicinal benefits!" than "the government does not encourage drinking water for hydration".
TFA reads like written by bottled water lobby (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a better article [telegraph.co.uk] on the same subject from the same newspaper.
The correct advice would be "Drink water when you are thirsty and when you are sweating[1]." There are no studies showing that drinking while neither thirsty nor sweating would reduce the risk of dehydration.
The EU took a stand against the lobbyist's here. It is the exact opposite of what happened when the US declared pizza a vegetable.
[1] In really dry and hot climate (like a desert) you might not notice that you are sweating, so drink anyways.
When you're all done laughing ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course drinking water (from the tap of from bottles) prevents you from getting dehydrated ... if you are an otherwise healthy person. No doubt about it.
If, on the other hand you are suffering from a clinical condition that puts you at risk of dehydration, you shouldn't rely on bottled water as a form of self-medication, but you should consult your GP. Unfortunately, allowing manufacturers to put the claim reduces the risk of dehydration on bottles of water blurs the line between a normal person drinking water simply to keep from becoming dehydrated and someone with a medical condition refraining from seeing his GP and instead relying on bottled water.
For that reason: why allow bottled-water manufacturers to make some half-witted medical claim with which to praise their wares? Bottled water has always sold well enough without ascribing quasi-medical claims to it.
Sound decision, rationale (Score:5, Informative)
Through most of Europe, tap water is perfectly drinkable, and healthier that bottled water. So what this European committee ruled on is whether companies selling bottled water have the right to promote them by claiming that they have a therapeutic benefit. I think it's quite ok to reject this claim.
In my office, we have this big fridge distributing bottled drinks, made available by a company linked to Coca-Cola. It comes with printed claims and brochures explaining what we need to drink at least 4 x 5 dl per day (the machine contains free bottles of 5 dl).
I'm an MD, and while a liquid intake of 1.5 to 2 liters is generally needed, it is wise to get most of it from the tap, or from soups and vegetables. You can certainly live well without any "drinks" - and premature death is guaranteed to those who would drink four bottles of these sugary drinks every day.
This is to prevent abuse. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course Water does fight dehydration, but so does Coka-Cola, Orange Juice as well as most drinks containing large quantities of Water.
The EU is simply refusing generic statements on products that don't have any distinguishing meaning compared to other products in the same class.
McDonalds might want to put "Two BigMacs will give you 70% of your daily calories need", which may be true, but it is highly misleading.
The whole purpose of this EU law is that consumers can trust the statements made by manufacturers are both true and distinguishing for that product compared to others in the same class.
The actual decision... (Score:4, Informative)