WATER, SELTZER & TEA

WATER
Water makes up 50 to 70 per cent of the weight of the human body. Even teeth have a water content of five per cent. Water is the essential medium of all body fluids including digestive juices, lymph, blood, urine and perspiration. The question is how much is essential, and how much is too much? Water is actually needed to carry essential nutrients for the healthy working of the body. It is also responsible for such functions as temperature regulation within the body and the lubrication of joints.

Why are we told to always drink eight glasses a day? No scientific papers contain references to this "famous" number. The closest was in Nutrition Recommendations, The Report of the Scientific Review Committee 1990 published by Health and Welfare Canada. It states that water used by the body comes from fluids ingested (5 cups), moisture in foods (4 cups) and that produced during metabolic oxidation (1 cup), totaling approximately 10 cups per day in moderate climates. We consume 10 cups of water per day, but only 5 cups come from ingested fluids, the rest come from foods and our metabolism. These five cups of fluids might include flavoured drinks, milk and fruit juice, not only water. Although coffee and alcoholic drinks count as fluid, they do encourage water loss through urine. (You'll notice when you have a lot of these drinks, you're a regular visitor to the washroom.) Choose to drink water when you're thirsty - don't get all your fluids from flavored beverages and foods.

Food also supplies water, so you may actually be dehydrated and are rehydrating yourself with the liquid from foods. The best way to find out if you're dehydrated is to drink water, and see if you regain your energy. Take note of the time of day it happens so that you can repeat it each time you're tired. You could be curing a lifelong cause of fatigue. The best advice is to drink enough to prevent the onset of thirst; stay "quenched" before thirst sets in. Thirst is the first sign of dehydration.

SELTZER
Beverages can be artificially carbonated, by the addition of carbon dioxide under pressure or the addition of chemicals, which when combined with acid in the beverage, give off bubbles of carbon dioxide -- this is the case for most soft drinks (a.k.a. soda, pop, seltzer, etc.). Carbonated beverages include everything from champagne and cola drinks, which have alcohol and/or sugar (and therefore provide calories), to mineral waters that have no calories. There are even carbonated milks! If you wish to include carbonated beverages in your eating plan, you don't have to worry about changing your metabolism. But you should take into account the other properties of these beverages (that is, caloric content, alcohol content, content of other nutrients, etc.), and how these fit in with your other food choices to provide a well-balanced plan. You should not use carbonated beverages in the place of beverages such as milk, which contain needed nutrients such as calcium. By themselves carbonated beverages do not cause calcium loss, fractures or an increased risk of osteoporosis in women -- contrary to what you may have heard.

TEA
According to Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, FACN, chief of the antioxidants research laboratory at Tufts University, tea is one of the top healthy foods. A recent study examined 340 men and women who had suffered heart attacks and found that those who drank a cup or more of black tea daily had a 44 percent reduction in heart attack risk compared to non-tea drinkers. The study was conducted by Dr. Howard Sesso et al. at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston. In another study by Dutch researchers, participants who drank one to two cups of black tea daily had a 46 percent lower risk of severe aortic atherosclerosis, one factor contributing to cardiovascular disease. Those who drank more than four cups of tea a day had a 69 percent lower risk. The study examined the association of tea intake and the severity of aortic atherosclerosis in 3,454 subjects who were free of cardiovascular disease at the time.

There are three types of tea manufactured: green tea, black tea (often labeled as pekoe or orange pekoe), and oolong tea. The difference between them lies in how the leaves are processed. Black tea is by far the most popular, comprising 77% of the world's tea production, and is the result of allowing the leaves to ferment before drying. Oolong tea production involves partial fermentation, while green tea is not fermented at all. In September of last year, scientists from around the world gathered in Washington, DC for the Second International Scientific Symposium on Tea & Human Health to present some promising new findings that suggest the antioxidant qualities of tea may rival that of broccoli, carrots and even vitamin E. Tea leaves are an abundant source of flavonoids (sometimes called bioflavonoids), a group of compounds with antioxidant properties that lend many plants their color. Of specific interest are the flavonoids catechins and flavonols, which prevent the synthesis of peroxides and free radicals, agents that can invade cell membranes and damage genetic material. Certain chemicals found in the molecular structure of these beneficial flavonoids, collectively known as phenolic groups, bind with peroxides and free radicals to annul their ability to cause damage.