8 glasses of water a day 'excessive'

[Kyng]

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...y-suggests

A recommendation to drink eight glasses of water a day is likely to be excessive for most people, according to scientists.

The suggestion has become accepted wisdom and often appears in health guidance. The latest work, however, the most rigorous study to date on water turnover, reveals that people have a wide range of water intakes. Many people only require about 1.5 to 1.8 litres a day, lower than the two litres typically recommended, the research suggests.

“The current recommendation is not supported scientifically at all,” said Yosuke Yamada of the National Institute of Biomedical Innovation, Health and Nutrition in Japan, and one of the paper’s first authors. “Most of the scientists are not sure where this recommendation came from.”

One issue is that previous estimates of water requirements have tended to ignore the water content of food, which can contribute a substantial proportion of our overall intake.

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Yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't drink 8 glasses of water (or anything close to it) on most days... although if you take into account the water content of the food I eat, perhaps you'll get pretty close to it .

What about you?

[Uncrowned Guard]

There have been many periods of my life where I pushed to drink a gallon a day on top of my food and such.  I have always felt like it was overkill, but also always felt amazing in both health and energy during these phases. 

Although I have always viewed the 8 glasses of water as more of a guideline as I always went by body weight and while I understood that food adds a lot of water, I never factored in food as too much water has yet to do me wrong.  Granted, I do see the article is taking an environmental approach to the situational and I'd actually like to see how much the real world is actually affected by this overconsumption.  People are often chronically dehydrated and rarely eat a healthy and balanced diet, so how many are even following this rule to the ounce?  And how much does that affect the water levels in a world where we dump industrial waste into our drinking water all the time?

[Opal Fruit]

I definitely don't drink as much as that a day, anyway.

[Kyng]

I definitely don't drink as much as that a day, anyway.

Yeah, I only drink one or two glasses of plain water per day .

However, I would assume squash counts towards this, since that's mostly just water. And I usually have two or three glasses of that... granted, that still doesn't get me up to eight, but apparently I don't need eight anyway .

[Opal Fruit]

Oh yeah, that's a point. But even squash I don't drink quite so much of to get up to 8 glasses. Also I tend to use smaller glasses?

[Megan]

No matter what I don’t drink anywhere what I should. Barely drink any. Ironically I have loads of water bottle.

[Tiger Eyes]

I do not much more than three or four glasses a day myself.

[Ann]

I can’t drink a lot of water unless I’m willing to stay a short distance to a washroom.  How could I leave if I drank up to 8 glasses of water daily?

I would like to drink more water though.

I drink up to 4 cups of coffee daily, eat soup and put water in my cereal instead of milk.

[Tiger Eyes]

I forgot to mention in my previous post I do drink some if my sugar is high.

[Moonshroom]

I always thought so.

You could honestly die from an excessive water intake, and Ryan North pointed this out in his excellent "How to Invent Everything" book by stating that "your body wasn't made to handle any kind of excesses and you could even die by drinking too much water".