Drinking eight glasses of water every day? Avoiding water with meals to improve digestion? Bottled water is better than tap water? Water Myths are proclaimed as truth by friends, family and colleagues each and every day. Often built around anecdotal evidence and perpetuated through generations, incorrect facts about water have become part of mob knowledge and something that is sure to come up in almost every discussion about our natural hydration source. While most are plausible and may often be based around the concept of encouraging positive drinking habits in the youth or impressionable, some are simply too far from centre but miraculously have a following of devout believers. From causing diseases through to being the chosen resource for war between all beings in the upcoming decades, some myths about water simply need to be busted and washed down the sink to be purified.
Drinking cold water straight after a meal can cause cancer.
Around the world in office and family chain mail, information spread like wildfire that drinking cold water would cause fats from your meal to coagulate and become trapped inside your intestines, causing blockage and build up. From repeated behaviour, these fats attaching themselves to the wall of your intestines would lead to cancer. Snopes did a really interesting cold water myth busting article that tackles the claims of the email in an academic format, completely debunking its theories. However ridiculous it may seem, this email stating that cold water made fats coagulate and TURN into cancer became one that circulated for longer than it ever should have.
We will eventually run out of water.
One of the greatest properties of H2O and why this myth has no basis is because the nature of water is cyclical. Back in school we made charts and diagrams about the evaporation process, from the ocean water through to mountain streams, lakes transporting water into our homes to be used and eventually ending up back in the ocean. While we cannot consume salt water, through evaporation we get enough fresh water that simply goes through cycles. Making sure that this water gets to our homes and communities is a challenge we face as well as the expanding population and the amount of water resources we use, however the pool of water from which we can drink from is never decreasing.
While those are two completely busted myths, what about the Mpemba Effect, which claims that water that is warm freezes faster than water that is cold? Logically one can clearly state that this has got to be one of the biggest water myths ever devised, but reports over at Wired.com state otherwise. I’m not convinced, but you make up your own mind.
Paul Jefferson is an avid truth sleuth who likes to go about his business educating the ignorant and pointing out the fallacies that we think to be truth in our everyday lives. After listening around water dispensers London to lots of stories about its damagin properties, Paul went to his typewriter and local library to consult about the truths of drinking H20. His findings are what you read here today.