Mineral water

Mineral water is a Green-Green food. Green-Green foods are very safe to eat as a regular part of a diet.

Category Quotes

Guideline related quotes related to Beverages and Green-Green throughout Geoff Bond's publications.

Typically, foragers lived in an area which had lakes and streams. They would camp a few hundred yards away so as to not scare the game. Were they constantly guzzling lake water? No— they got a high percentage of fluid from the foods they ate. Indeed, San Bushmen (who do live in very marginal areas) have been observed to go without free water for 280 days! ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.49

Dr. Heinz Valtin (a kidney expert with the department of physiology at Dartmouth Medical School) said, it's "difficult to believe that evolution left us with a chronic water deficit that needs to be compensated by forcing a high fluid intake." ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.49

In this context, it is worth mentioning that most people today are eating foodstuffs that are low in water, and so they feel thirsty more frequently. Once you start eating Paleo, with its water-rich vegetation, you will find that you will need to drink less. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.49

It is often claimed that by the time people feel thirsty, they are already dehydrated. On the contrary, thirst begins when the blood has become less dilute by under 2 percent, whereas dehydration begins when the blood has become less dilute by at least 5 percent. When we were kids and were thirsty, we just ran up to a tap and gulped from it. Now the authorities are backing this principle. Let thirst be your guide— you do not have to drink water if you are not thirsty. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.49

It actually is possible to have too much water. Many ordinary folk have died of water intoxication, fondly believing the mantra, "The more water, the better." ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.49

Where did the 8x8 myth (the idea that we must drink at least eight 8-ounce cups of water a day) come from? Nobody knows! The nearest clue we have is that back in the 1940s, the Food and Nutrition Board opined that daily fluid intake should be around 64 fluid ounces (8 x 8-ounce cups). But this recommendation came with the proviso that most of the fluids would com e from food. Then, with the magic of modern marketing in the 1980s, we were persuaded to buy water from a bottle and glug from it at every opportunity. Many of the arguments are manipulative and utterly spurious: For example, that drinking all this water helps to lose weight, or that it "detoxifies the body." ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.49

With regard to athletes, Dr. Deborah Cohen (investigations editor of the British Medical Journal) observed that no marathon runner has suffered from dehydration, whereas some sixteen marathon runners have died from over-hydration (water intoxication) and 1,600 were made critically ill. She found that sports drink companies sponsor scientists dedicated to promoting hydration. Their greatest success was to undermine the idea that the body has a perfectly good mechanism for detecting dehydration— thirst. And so they have spread false alarms about the "dangers" of dehydration. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.50

The slogan "drink eight glasses a day" is a highly misleading piece of marketing by the mineral and bottled water companies. Other water manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon with so-called special property waters— mineralized, ionized, magnetized, polarized— a whole range of sales gimmicks to gull the public. We now live, quite falsely, in terror of not drinking enough water. Just know that if you follow the Savanna Model to the full, you will be getting four pints (64 oz) of water just from what you eat. The bottom line is that we need only drink when thirsty. By all means, drink bottled water, but water out of the tap is probably just as good. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.79

One cup is one serving of water, milk, or nut milk. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.95

if your infant is not drinking m other's milk or formula milk, then the only other beverage he or she should have is plain water. Will any kind of water do? Tap water, unjustly, is much maligned and is quite safe to use when boiled. For all young babies, you should boil the water anyway. For the cautious, by all means buy bottled water. Avoid the high-sodium brands and varieties that are flavored with sugars. Distilled water is the safest. Juiced non-starchy vegetables are fine, but avoid carrot juice and fruit juices— they give a sugar rush and help rot teeth. As for packaged drinks, be ultra-suspicious. Read the fine print, as they are almost always loaded with sugar and other harmful substances. Don't even think of giving your child colas and other carbonated drinks. Get your child to accept water as the normal thirst-quencher. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.106

Water should still be the main drink; try carbonated water with a twist of lemon. Unsweetened tea, iced or otherwise, is also okay. ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.107

In times of plenty, the Eskimo could consume prodigious amounts of meat: 9 lbs in a day has been measured as a normal occurrence. At such times they drank prodigious amounts of water, too— which is a direct result of eating an excess of protein (see "Alkalizing" section in Chapter 1 and "Acid-alkali Balance" section in the Ow ner's Manual). The kidneys needed to flush out the overabundant amino acids (proteins). ~Paleo in a Nutshell p.120

Plant foods are an important, even critical, source of water. One of the most important is the bitter-juiced tsama melon, from which our familiar (but sweet) watermelon is descended. Indeed, the San obtain more than 90% of their water needs from plants. This is not typical for our African Pleistocene ancestors, who would have had access to waterholes, ponds, and streams year round. It is fascinating to realize that the human body can survive without free water at all, provided there is access to enough plant food of the right type. ~Deadly Harvest p.15

When the kill is made, the hunters are allowed to eat the liver immediately and they will eat more of the meat as necessary to satisfy their hunger. If they are far from base, they will eat the parts that spoil fast first. The animal is butchered on the spot. Only the gallbladder and the testicles are discarded. ~Deadly Harvest p.16

The main beverage for our Pleistocene ancestors was water, plain and simple. Or perhaps not so plain— often it came from a waterhole used by the other creatures of the savanna, containing all kinds of bugs, germs, and sediment. In addition, fluid was obtained from vegetation such as the tsama melon, roots and tubers, and even from rainwater collected in the hollow trunks of trees. Finally, some liquid was obtained from the mammals that were killed on occasion; the San would drink the blood and stomach contents of antelope, for example. ~Deadly Harvest p.75

Our Pleistocene ancestors' water came from rivers, lakes, and waterholes. Often, they had to compete with lions, crocodiles, and hyenas for a sip from a muddy, excrement-infested water source. It is probable that they picked up many nasty parasites and diseases from their water supply. Water supplies in the early civilizations were even worse: the high concentrations of population not only took water out of the river, but put sewage back in. The major cities would be located on a good river, and mostly the population had to get drinking water from it as best they could. There were outbreaks of various waterborne diseases, but usually the gods were blamed rather than unsanitary practices. ~Deadly Harvest p.79

[Water born diseases] changed dramatically in Victorian times: there were particularly bad outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and typhus in London and scientists had discovered that sewage-contaminated water was the cause. In reaction, the authorities undertook immense construction projects from 1850 to 1875 to build elaborate networks of pipes and tunnels to collect raw sewage and carry it to treatment works outside the city. In parallel, pumping stations, reservoirs, treatment sta­ tions, and pipe networks were constructed to bring safe drinking water to every household. It is said that this new science of public health engineering has done more to prevent and cure disease than any conventional medical treatment. Quickly, public health engineering spread to America and continental Europe. Overseas, the public works department became one of the most important development arms of British and French colonial governments. ~Deadly Harvest p.80

Water for municipal supplies comes from two chief sources: surface water from rivers and lakes, and groundwater from water-bearing layers underground. Surface water is usually dirtier and needs several stages of treatment. It is first filtered and then "flocculated," a process whereby certain chemicals are added to the water to make the fine particles clump together and sink to the bottom where they can be strained off. Other chemicals are sometimes added to reduce acidity and to bring hardness to acceptable levels. Both surface water and groundwater need to be disinfected to kill harmful bacteria. Most commonly, this is done by injecting chlorine gas; excess chlorine is removed when it has done its work. The gas ozone is sometimes used instead of chlorine because it leaves less odor, but it is more expensive. ~Deadly Harvest p.80

... municipal water contains traces of the chemicals that have been added. They are mostly harmless substances like slaked lime, baking soda, and alum (aluminum sulfate). Chlorine is potentially more aggressive, but the active quantities that remain are usually harmless too, certainly a lot less than in the average swimming pool. ~Deadly Harvest p.80

There is some evidence that a chemical called fluoride helps fight tooth decay so, more controversially, some municipalities voluntarily dose their water supply with fluoride. Now it happens that the waters of our African homeland were quite rich in fluoride, certainly no less than the concentrations deliberately put there by some municipal authorities. Nevertheless, many consumers object to being forcibly medicated in this way. ~Deadly Harvest p.80

A great many of the water treatment plants and distribution networks were built over 100 years ago. Not only have they reached the end of their useful lives, they suffer a chronic lack of investment. In consequence, they are vulnerable to mistakes in chemical dosage and to contamination through leaky pipework. ~Deadly Harvest p.80

Everybody was happy drinking municipal water until the 1980s, when the public became more concerned about the aging equipment, the added chemicals, and the forced fluoridation. The bottled water company Perrier brilliantly exploited this disquiet. They initiated a marketing coup on a scale similar to Kellogg with breakfast cereals (see Chapter 2) and persuaded Americans and Europeans to abandon drinking the water they could get for free out of a tap and buy water in a bottle. ~Deadly Harvest p.81

The mineral water companies latched on to another alarm— that we are all dehydrating from lack of water. Remarkably, they persuaded us to not only switch from tap water to bottled water but also to drink much more of it. Such was their success that consumption of bottled water has soared from virtually zero in 1970 to 21.2 gallons per person per year in 2002. Curiously, consumer watchdogs estimate that 60% of the bottled water sold on the market is simply municipal water put into bottles (sometimes with further treatment). Most of the remaining 40% of bottled water does indeed come from natural springs and wells, but it still has to be sterilized, conditioned, and carbonated. ~Deadly Harvest p.81

Our species, like most on the planet, are designed to get most of their liquid intake from water. Until recent times, that was still the case for us, even in the West. But we have seen the rise of alternative drinks, which have come along just in the average grandparent's lifetime. Setting aside wine, distilled spirits, and liqueurs, which are not thirst quenchers, what are we now consuming instead of water? When we add up the figures for beer, tea, coffee, cocoa, soft drinks, juices, and milk, we find that the average American is consuming, in a year, 150 gallons of liquid that is not plain water— that comes to 3.25 pints per day! ~Deadly Harvest p.81

Municipal water supplies are still far healthier than the fetid, polluted, and disease-ridden waters that our ancient ancestors were obliged to drink. Bottled waters are a harmless diversion. The alarms about dehydration are largely over done, simply marketing manipulation to get us to drink far more bottled water than we need. ~Deadly Harvest p.91

The Eskim o's high-meat diet provides protein in excess of the body's requirements. The body cannot tolerate excess protein in the bloodstream, so it immediately mobilizes the kidneys to get rid of it. In turn, the kidneys have to extract more water from the bloodstream to provide the necessary fluid for flushing the waste proteins out in the urine. This has two consequences. This extra urination leads to dehydration and abnormal feelings of thirst— the reason why Eskimos were driven to downing vast quantities of water on their high-meat diets. Second, nature did not design the kidneys to work like this on a continuous basis. Waste protein cells and calcium-bearing cells crystallize into hard nodules. These are the kidney stones that block kidney ducts and cause immense pain. ~Deadly Harvest p.109

At the Appleton Alternative High School, in Wisconsin, the kids used to be out of control until 1997. Then, fast-food burgers, fries, and burritos in the cafeteria gave way to fresh fruit, fresh salad, and meats "prepared with old-fashioned recipes." Good drinking water replaced carbonated beverages. "Grades are up, truancy is no longer a problem, arguments are rare, and teachers are able to spend their time teaching," pronounced Principal LuAnn Coenen. ~Deadly Harvest p.255

The savannas of east Africa are regions of high fluoride availability, particularly in the water. In such circumstances, we would predict that the human organism came to depend on it. Indeed, tests show that the human skeleton does well on a good fluoride intake. This is not an argument to go out and take fluoride supplements, but rather a reassurance that, if your water is fluoridated or you use fluoridated toothpaste, it is fine to accept it. ~Deadly Harvest p.270

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