Water
Although this book focuses on foods, water’s importance mandates mention. The Egyptians thought it the universe’s original building block, a belief that Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus (c. 625-c. 547 BCE) reiterated, though its formula was unknown until 1813, when Swedish physician and chemist Jons Jacob Berzelius (1779-1848) published its 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to oxygen.89 Water appears to be a precondition for life, which probably arose in the ocean roughly 3.8 billion years ago. Water supports life’s chemical reactions and is a solvent for polar as well as organic molecules. The body’s proportion of water varies with age, sex, leanness, activity, and diseases and ranges between 45 and 75 percent of body mass, with American anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen (b. 1952) estimating the amount at roughly two-thirds.90 Most foods, especially those with few calories, contain it. Fruits and vegetables tend to be over four-fifths water. For example, lettuce, cucumbers, celery, peppers, spinach, tomatoes, carrots, watermelon, strawberries, and cantaloupe (Cucumis melo) are at least 90 percent water.91 Such items hydrate the body besides supplying other nutrients. Caloric foods like peanuts have little water.
The body stores around two-thirds of its water inside cells, though adipose has none, a circumstance that explains why such tissue stores so much energy92 The remaining one-third, outside cells, is in blood plasma, body cavities, organs, and other tissues. The body uses minerals—chiefly sodium, potassium, calcium, chlorine, phosphorus, and magnesium—as electrolytes to achieve and perpetuate this balance inside and outside cells. Digestion requires water. Saliva, digestion’s initiator, is 97-99.5 percent water.93 At suitable temperatures, water cools an individual when consumed and so is an aid in hot weather. An overheated body cools itself through perspiration, a mechanism that requires rehydration to avoid heat stroke and related problems. Water moistens mucus membranes and helps eliminate wastes through urination. Water’s importance is evident in the fact that dehydration can kill. Someone who neither drinks water nor eats foods with it will perish within a week, though an adequately hydrated person can survive “several weeks without food.”94
Water intake replenishes loss through perspiration, urination, respiration, and other functions. By increasing metabolism, activity increases demand for water. Even without exertion, people lose 2.5-3 liters (0.7-0.8 gallons) of water daily, all of which must be replaced.95 Water’s ingestion replaces losses liter per liter. Other suitable beverages include tea (Camellia sinensis) and coffee (Coffea species) because they are primarily water. Their preparation by boiling water kills pathogens, benefit- ting people without access to safe water. Milk, discussed in Chapter 7, also has water and may be recommended as a source of other nutrients. Soft drinks supply water, but nutritionists and dieticians dislike their sucrose, HFCS, or similar sweeteners. Although they may contain vitamins and minerals, fruit juices may be little better than soft drinks as water substitutes because of their sweeteners and absence of fiber. By increasing urine production, alcohol subverts the attempt to quench thirst.
Illnesses can dehydrate the body. Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, and celiac disease deplete water through diarrhea. Waterborne diseases like cholera and dysentery bring diarrhea, misery, and death to societies that lack potable water. Since 1817 cholera has assailed the world in seven pandemics.96 During the fifth (1881-1896), Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) perished after ignoring warnings not to drink water without first boiling it.97 Other casualties included Prussian military theorist Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz (1780-1831), eleventh U.S. President James Knox Polk (1795-1849), and French engineer and contributor to the science of thermodynamics Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot (1796-1832).
Waterborne diseases still plague developing nations, with cholera entrenched in several African countries. Turning to southwestern Asia’s Arabia, Yemen surpassed 1 million infections and tallied almost 2,500 deaths between 2016 and 2018.98 Each year since 2010, cholera has infected some
4 million people worldwide, killing as many as 130,000 annually." Poverty, disorder, and violence encourage such diseases to spread, imperiling humanity on a scale difficult to comprehend wherever sanitation yields clean water. These episodes highlight water’s centrality to humankind as well as the chaos that results from contamination.
