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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html
If the Technocrats are following the advice of their own scientists this explains a lot.
Read the comment from the idiot at the bottom, he is obviously detached from society and has no idea how communication works between human beings.
Now, my mouth is slightly dry so I'm going to avail myself of the mains supply.
This one?
Quote:
He said: “The EU is saying that this does not reduce the risk of dehydration and that is correct.
“This claim is trying to imply that there is something special about bottled water which is not a reasonable claim.”
Bet it isn't this one
'The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true. ?If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.?
Yes, the whole thing is underexplained, poorly written and it seems like both sides are acting very weird.
First of all, the next time I see "common sense" as a good reason to believe something, I'm going to burn a witch...
Secondly, water alone cannot prevent dehydration but the way it's shown in the article they make it appear like I don't need to drink water anymore and won't have to fear dehydration.
Either the article is spinning it or the EU didn't bother to explain what they actually want to say.
So I can only assume that they mean if you only drink water all day but have no intake of salt etc. you can still dehydrate. You can also still dehydrate due to other health reasons and water can't prevent that.
On the other hand writing "this product can prevent dehydration" on a bottle of water makes me wonder who came up with such an ingenious marketing trick...
:dizzy2:
edit:
So the food experts in the EU should solve the financial problems? If your house is on fire, should everybody in the whole Netherlands drop their work and come to help stop the fire?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
'So the food experts in the EU should solve the financial problems?'
EU shouldn't have food-experts, saves us existional debate on what exactly makes a cuccumber
Yes, that one, because the claim was:Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiaexz
Regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration and of concomitant decrease of performance
Nothing about bottled water, and it IS true, regular intake of water reduces the risk of dehydration, you can live for days longer in the heat without food than without water, in the later case you'll keel over in about 24 hours.
Pretending that confounding factors are relevent to this statement is absurd. Yes, I could have a mineral deficiency that caused me to dehydrate but without water I will dehydrate, even if that water comes in fruit juice, or through food.
Quite.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
I can actually believe that social retardation is a factor.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
Philip, on the face of it this seems completely ridiculous. But on delving a little deeper, the English version PDF posted makes it quite clear why in fact the EU ruling does make a lot of sense. It's all in the detail. From the PDF, the bottled water claim is this:
Which, as any biologist can tell you, is arrant nonsense. You are not going to prevent dehydration based on a “regular intake”, for the simple reason that you do not store “excess” water in your body (you only store what you need, this is important because if you didn't you would die from all sorts of biochemical processes failing to work properly). Hence, you need to consume water, which can be from any source including solid foodstuffs or yielded as waste from various biochemical processes, each day, and how much you need to consume entirely depends on your environment and your activities. Someone who regularly drinks significant amounts of water but decides to go wandering in the Victoria desert without a hat is equally likely to die from having his pitiful brain cooked as someone who doesn't drink the water but has the same stupid idea.Quote:
'Regular consumption of significant amounts of water
can reduce the risk of development of dehydration and
of concomitant decrease of performance'.
Unless you are implying that you should deliberately drink so much water that it causes actual swelling of the tissue (by which time you will have other health issues, btw).
... In addition to which, one might notice that the same claim is equally false, and therefore equally ridiculous when made about milk. Do you see “regular intake of milk helps reduce the risk of development of dehydration” ?
Yes, this is one of those things that sounds silly, but actually it's about bottled water companies making bogus healthy claims about their products, trying to push the idea that you need to drink that much water to be healthy.
In other words it's yet another "look at this crazy ridiculous thing the government did!!" stories.
Looks that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro
Also, the cucumber/banana hype from a couple of years back (referenced in the article) is bogus as well.
'Which, as any biologist can tell you, is arrant nonsense. You are not going to prevent dehydration based on a ?regular intake?, for the simple reason that you do not store ?excess? water in your body'
See nothing wrong with the claim, regular intake means, well regular intake. The EU must think that people are total idiots if they think people need to be protected from thinking they can stock it in their body
Regular intake of milk will reduce the chance of dehydration because it contains water.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
The statement that regular consumption of water reduces risk of dehydration is patently true.
This is a case of common usage vs scientific usage. The statement might be construed as untrue in a very strictly defined scientific way, but in the common sense of "hydrated" it is obviously true, to suggest otherwise is to play a nonsense language game.
In the name of Christ, to be "hydrated" means to be "watered".
NO.
The bottled water people applied for a "reduction of disease risk" claim. They wanted to claim that drinking bottled water is to dehydration as X-food is to lowering cholesterol. But those are very different.
The reason it's being reported differently is that the journalists saw "EU claims water can't hydrate people!!" and were like "Oh yeah, that'll sell!".
What? Are you reading what you've quoted? They say nothing about prevention, but about how drinking water regularly reduces the risk of water.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
Once they were out in the desert they wouldn't be regularly consuming water, would they?Quote:
Hence, you need to consume water, which can be from any source including solid foodstuffs or yielded as waste from various biochemical processes, each day, and how much you need to consume entirely depends on your environment and your activities. Someone who regularly drinks significant amounts of water but decides to go wandering in the Victoria desert without a hat is equally likely to die from having his pitiful brain cooked as someone who doesn't drink the water but has the same stupid idea.
This man is stupid. He's making up things about the claim - that water is special - that aren't there.Quote:
Originally Posted by article
In the PDF, the bureaucrats state that low water content in the body isn't a risk factor for dehydration, it's just a measurement of dehydration. How they can say that having a low amount of water in your body isn't a factor in being dehydrated is something only bureaucrats can explain.
Anyway, this is just another example of stupid government bureaucrats making decisions on technicalities. Reminds me of blind men studying elephants.
CR
Because they don't say that at all? To return the favour: have you actually read... ? They say that “low water content” is dehydration, not a cause.Quote:
This man is stupid. He's making up things about the claim - that water is special - that aren't there.
In the PDF, the bureaucrats state that low water content in the body isn't a risk factor for dehydration, it's just a measurement of dehydration. How they can say that having a low amount of water in your body isn't a factor in being dehydrated is something only bureaucrats can explain.
In the context of bottled water the claim about dehydration is nonsense for the simple reason that all it makes you do (if you're not dehydrated already) is pee more. Your body is quite capable of reducing the effects of dehydration by conserving (sending less to your bladder). Your body is not, however, able to prevent or reduce risk other than through conscious decisions by you to avoid being put at risk in the first place.
To understand this ruling you have to grasp the difference with the following example. Regular intake of Fe3+ ions is good because it helps reduce the risks of various diseases. Therefore it is good for your health to eat iron ion rich food stuffs. Reason: your body is capable of storing some reserve of Fe3+ ions, so that when you ordinarily would run low you've got a backup supply. A regular intake therefore serves to maintain the backup supply at full levels.
With water that's not the case. If you drink water more than you would need for your day to day consumption anyway, all it make your body do is send more water to your bladder in the form of urine. We are not bears, we can't recycle the urine in our bladder as backup water supply, so all water in your bladder is waste (if you don't drink it, afterwards of course).
So intake reduces or prevents nothing in the sense that it will not help you if you do not suffer from dehydration already. If you suffer already we're past prevention or lowering risks already. So the bottom line is that there is no window of time wherein this claim holds true. In other words it is completely bogus.
Add to this that your body extracts water from all the food and drink you consume, and you may observe that by definition everyone has a regular intake of water. If they don't, they're dead. At which point the claim is ridiculous on a technical level: it is arrant nonsense.
That is actually the generous, benevolent way of looking at things. The less generous approach would highlight how the ill educated public might associate water exclusively with the drink they might buy or tap...
No it won't. As I've just explained above, this is one of those cases where intuition/gut instinct is simply completely and utterly wrong. There is really no chance of dehydration, there is only the odds that someone consumes enough water given his activities in his environment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
WTF? seriously, those guys at EU who make the ban doesn't deserve to graduate from Junior High
Well they can, and you do (roughly 75% of you is water, after all). Just not to the point that you can store reserves. Dehydration does not care whether or not you were a good boy yesterday, or even last hour. All that matters is whether or not you have enough now, and now, and now, and now... ad infinitum. Consuming a volume of water (that which is passed on from your digestive system to the rest of your body, anyway) means to render you able to dispose of an equivalent volume of water *without* incurring dehydration. Your body has no choice but to dispose of water in any case, primarily because you have no other option when disposing waste or heat, and so you will often run a bit low on water levels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
That is, until you die you will always, each day be dehydrated at some point, no matter how regular your intake. Most notably after you wake from sleep, you will be (hopefully just a little) dehydrated. When you are thirsty, you are *already* dehydrated to such an extent your body feels the need to interrupt your higher order brain functions with a low level plea for drink.
No the thread is about getting mad at EU people who do a biology fact check and decide that the claim made is bogus and then reject the application for it to be used in marketing campaigns as if it were medical fact. There's a subtle difference in there somewhere.Quote:
It's like getting mad at the people who make the $.50 Air Machines at Gas Stations if they put a sign on the machine that said "Our air can help prevent your tires from deflating."
I disagree. I, for one, am not fussed about tossing out a bogus claim from a marketing campaign.
Yep our air cannot help your tires from deflating either. However, it can help your tires from deflating past a certain pressure point within a certain time frame, something which uncompressed air cannot. So there's at least the smallest amount of relevance to that claim, other than marketing guff. ~;)
'That is actually the generous, benevolent way of looking at things. The less generous approach would highlight how the ill educated public might associate water exclusively with the drink they might buy or tap...'
My world just got scarier
If you haven't consumed water in any form for some hours, does not then drinking water lower the risk you'll become dehydrated?Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
So there's no difference in terms of becoming dehydrated if I drink half a liter of water before going for a long run or if I don't drink that water?Quote:
So intake reduces or prevents nothing in the sense that it will not help you if you do not suffer from dehydration already.
CR
What's scary about it? That some people might fail to spot the nonsense for what it is?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
Was talking more in general. Was on the roof of a building and there was no 'DO NOT JUMP FROM THIS BUILDING look for more information on www.heightsaredangerous.eu' sticker, I could have diedQuote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
No. After that long run you will be dehydrated, too. Two and a half glass of water isn't going to prevent you from feeling thirsty after that long run. Now you could say: just drink much more water. But again, no you won't make a difference if you do it that way except that now your bladder will end up uncomfortably full.Quote:
So there's no difference in terms of becoming dehydrated if I drink half a liter of water before going for a long run or if I don't drink that water?
It would have made a difference if you frequently drunk small amounts of water while running, you see, because then your body would not suddenly have to deal with the drop in salt levels that necessitate dumping water in the bladder.
But that is, unfortunately, at odds with “regular intake will reduce the risk...” If you didn't do that run, but took a walk instead you would've needed far less water. And if you did nothing, you might get by without consuming any during that time.
Instead of trying to invoke intuition as if that somehow makes it right, could you tell me where my view is wrong of the human body as absorbing only as much water until it doesn't want any more and dumping any more as waste?
Easy. Statements about being beneficial for your health must have some semblance of truth otherwise you risk them being bannedfrom your marketing campaigns, you see. Just in case you were actually making it up, or doing make believe, like Yakult.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
The best BigWaterCompany666 came up with, apparently, was this:
Another claim binned, then.Quote:
Upon request for clarification, the applicant proposed water loss in tissues or reduced water content in tissues as risk factors of dehydration.
No, my question is: what is wrong with the EU ruling? Like, really, factually wrong. Not like: well but grandma always said this. Or like: well I think that.
It's only the minor detail that BigWaterCompany666 is trying to troll the population in a obvious money making scheme. And the goverment is supposed to protect about such matter. Homeopathy also "cures" dehydration btw, scientific proven.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
I guess if the company is forced to place warning labels things gets equal. "Warning, this product contains a high amount of dihydrogenoxide. Accidental inhalation of dihydrogenoxide causes thousands of deaths every year."
Or breathing liquid water is bad for you. :creep:
Everything, it's everything that's wrong with the EU summarised in a screaming example of petty patronage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
The EU is merely trying to justify its existence with such wastes of time. I wonder how long this ruling took, and at what cost.
~:smoking:
Let's have a commision investigate it, got some outranged politicians to spareQuote:
Originally Posted by rory_20_uk
In the meantime X Hitting the X with a sledgehammer may cause damage to your monitor
You guys are thinking utterly uneconomic in this case.
There are 3 scenarios for me:
1. Noone has a clue what all the ingredients and claims on the packages mean, we just buy the food anyway and the companies sell us whatever they want in lead-painted packaging.
2. The governments/EU hire a few experts who make sure the companies don't mislead people with bogus claims. This costs the overall EU population a few thousand manhours.
3. All 600 million citizens in Europe educate themselves on the chemistry, biology and links involved with food intake and spend several billion or trillion manhours in doing so, a huge waste of time compared to option two, for a similar outcome.
It's common sense, guys!
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
It's water. It does rehydrate you. We're not talking about some new chemical that would need to go through the EMA licensing procedure. I hope that most EU citizens are aware what water does.
~:smoking:
Probably, again, the disconect between common sense and science.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
For the "common man" dehydration is not "Oooh, I feel a bit thirsty after run" it's "ooh, cripes I've got a headache and I feel faint."
In such a context, the calim makes sense, also, if I drink small amounts of water during physical labour that will prevent dehydration, won't it? Are you suggesting that, whilst working hard with my shirt off in the middle of summer having a canteen of water handy to take sips from is not a good idea?
You're over thinking this Tellos, really.
No, it's not common sense.Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
If the common man knew this already then they wouldn't need to write it onto the bottles.
That's common sense.
Why not call it "The Thirst Quenching drink" ?
Also, technically, don't you need certain body salts as well for hydration purposes? I am sure I remember reading that just water is bad for you, lets say after you been working out hard as in the sweat you lose salts as well, not simply just water and if you kept on going and only had water, these salts decrease and decrease and keeps gaining lower concentrations.
This whole debate is just a cheap opportunity at some EU-bashing while they have, as Tellos stated over and over again, a valid point. Get over that EU-hatred pls.
And no single directive from the EU was ever meant for the 'common man' so it's normal that they use the scientific correct terms instead of the 'common sense' claims.
Valid point on paper only, yeah it can be justified with protocols/rules/blabla and all that jazz, you can but that doesn't mean you have to. It's still pure kafkaQuote:
Originally Posted by Conradus
So basically you're saying: yes the EU is right, but I don't care because they shouldn't be doing it in the first place?Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
They are right only within the framework their own rules, has nothing to do with actually having a point. It's like not getting a permission to build a shed because it's 1.99.99 meter from your house instead of the required 2Quote:
Originally Posted by Conradus
:rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios
And would I be just as dehydrated as if I didn't drink any water before that run? Of course not.
You seem to view the human body as a system that immediately discards all extra water, as though water enters the mouth and goes straight to the bladder without traveling through the GI tract. If I drink water then go running, I'll start sweating as water is going through my GI tract, where it can be absorbed.
It's not at odds at all. You seem to view the phrase "reduce the risk" as "be perfect for every situation to avoid dehydration with no extra water waste". If a person went for a walk instead of a run, and therefore needed less water, that does nothing to disqualify the statement that "regular intake will reduce the risk". Risk is probability.Quote:
It would have made a difference if you frequently drunk small amounts of water while running, you see, because then your body would not suddenly have to deal with the drop in salt levels that necessitate dumping water in the bladder.
But that is, unfortunately, at odds with “regular intake will reduce the risk...” If you didn't do that run, but took a walk instead you would've needed far less water. And if you did nothing, you might get by without consuming any during that time.
CR
...Really? I know we sometimes go into depth on some really irrelevent stuff but this is pretty pointless, even for us.
http://xkcd.com/386/
:knight:
CR
If you read the article, you'll see that this was used as a test case, nobody really cares if it goes on the bottle of water.Quote:
Originally Posted by Husar
As Conradus corectly pointed out, the EU is evil and that is what we need to focus on.
Tongue somewhat in cheek, but consider what this regulation actually does in practice, which is somewhat different from what it does on paper. The same is true for the cucumber question.
jesus guys, I waste my time talking about stupid stuff and saying stupid things but this thread just takes the cake.
Careful. Posts like this one might be labeled as "unconstructive" and you'll get slapped. Better stick to discussing the re-hydrating qualities of water, or in this case, the lack thereof.Quote:
Originally Posted by a completely inoffensive name
Also, apparently "water" in Europe means "cola" like "pizza" means "vegetable" in the USA.
As someone who has worked in the field in both hot dry desert and humid warm rainforest I can state the following:
i) If sweating hard and needing to pee... after about half an hour that need to pee goes away... I would say we have some capacity to reabsord that bladder water.
ii) The body muscles can store more fluids then normal... my morning trick in the jungle was a flat can of coke pre-breakfast. For lunch 4 schooners of cordial... to the point back in the field I had sweat smelling cordial sweet. And a beer in the shower post work... half a beer when dehydrated is hyper effective. However it isn't the fluid its the salts that go along with it that help the absorption.
iii) Dehydration has levels to it... so your body has a range of fluid levels it can work in. I don't believe that at the normal 100% we automatically become a fountain... it depends on how much we are sweating and how well conditioned we are to our surroundings. Better conditioned the better we retain fluids... the general saying for most mine workers in Indonesia was "It is a brave or foolish man who farts in Indonesia"... it wasn't just about Bali Belly it was about how over hydrated they were in response to the conditions and their bodies not adapting (2 weeks in, 2 weeks out)... in exploration spending 5 weeks outside in the field I adapted and could handle more fluids and work longer through the day.
iv) Lack of water kills in the desert ... I was drinking >4 L a day easy whilst hiking there... sure you need minerals too... but end of the day dehydration will always get you gram for gram if you don't have water.
Anyhow overtime I found that I was able to hold more immediate drink fluids without instant peeing... now as an office worker it is a totally different scenario... I think some of the biologists need to measure humans in a range of conditions and humans going through a range of physical fitness in those conditions.
On paper, it's supposed to verify the claims that food producers want to put on their products to make sure that they're not false or misleading. This is probably a silly example, but it doesn't invalidate the practice. Difficult to explain or to present to the common man? So is anti-trust regulation. Should we get rid of that, too?Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
:coffeenews:
The cucumber story is even more misleading. EU regulations about the maximum curve of cucumbers and whatnot were supposed to replace previously existing national regulations. Many of these (EU) regulations have been revoked 3 years ago, probably in part because they were used to make the EU look ridiculous, with no consequenses: supermarkets continue to apply the standards, or even higher ones, and refuse to put crooked cucumbers or deformed paprikas on the shelves.
Yes, people make fun of these regulations but when they actually go to a supermarket and see a banana or cucumber that doesn't apply to them, they go "eeew" and won't buy them anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kralizec
Now of course that makes the regulations a bit superfluous but not as ridiculous as some would want them to be IMO.
Oh God, all these pipes running through my house, and NOTHING to drink because the government took away my bottled water. How can I keep hydrated now?
Your post is very appreciated GeliCube!
I know I often don't drink enough, sometimes simply because I forget. It's a constant problem.
What's also interesting about water is that the more expensive bottled waters aren't very different from others or even tap water (at least here, where tap water is the tightest regulated/controlled food).
The minerals you usually get with your food anyway and the taste, while I also think it differs, is more or less the same (I suppose the plastic or so makes you think it's different).
I've seen several TV shows where they had people and professional food tasters etc. and usually they couldn't really make out such a big difference.
So spending a ton of money on expensive bottled water is usually a waste. One more reason to support some legislature against bogus claims. ~;)
There are even some instances where the small print on the bottle says it's basically a bottle filled with tap water. :laugh4:
Such odd (NE)Water legends it exists.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
Anyway, since we are touching on food regulations. What do people think it reasonable?
If I understand current regulations properly, then any health claim need to be confirmed and it also needs to be confirmed that it has a positive effect, in addition to regular diet. This to avoid stuff like anything containing any vital ingredient that prevents deficiency diseases, would be able to get a health label, like vitamin C preventing Barlow's disease.
This wasn't a legend, it was what it said on the bottle, in somewhat flowery language but it came down to them filling the bottle with tap water and then selling it for a higher price.Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
It's not even so that that would be any less healthy, it's just that people could get the same water quality much cheaper out of their tap at home...
But somehow people put a lot of stock in bottles, and glass is better than plastic etc. but the differences are usually minuscule, at least as far as the water quality or "healthiness" are concerned.
I think the quality of bottled water vs. tap water depends on where you live. I live in a desert region and our tap water tends to be really hard, so bottled water is generally better quality.
Tap Water has always been terrible. At my parents, it tasted rather metallic. At a house I rented, they had 'clean' brown tap water. At an appartment I was in, the tap water also tasted bad and in the south of England, it is all "bubbly" so you fill a glass and by the time you sat down, half the glass contents are missing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tuuvi
Stop winging and get a filter.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tiaexz
Also, South Downs water is fine, it has all your Calcium.
Here in Germany I'm not aware of places where you can't drink the tap water.
There may be a few but I drank tap water at school, where my parents live, here where I live and there's not really anything wrong with it. :shrug:
As I heard and said, it's the strongest controlled/regulated "food" here in Germany, seems a bit strange to me that the quality differs so much in other developed countries.
No different in southern europe, the more south you go the worse it gets. In Spain it's really bad sometimes, you actually smell of metal after a showerQuote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
On the other hand, Italy (and Rome in particular) is filled with public taps so you can refill your canteen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
Now, apparently, water is useful again: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s...on-claims.html
How much EU money was spent on this word mincing?
that's a bit of a generalization...the tap water is just fine over here....a slight aftertaste from the chloride used for sanitation..but that's all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fragony
Never had any issues with tap water over here at Finland.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/th.../2011/nov/18/1Quote:
Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla
You've been suckered pvc...these professors and the journalists are the ones wasting your time. They deliberately filed it under the "disease risk" category because they knew it was the wrong category.Quote:
The claim wasn't submitted for a genuine product, but was created as a deliberate 'test' exercise by the two professors, who were apparently already unhappy with the European Food Standards Authority.
Dont worry! Lack of sunlight and freezing temeperatures for months each year in this frozen excuse of swamp, will even out any non issues with tap water. I would rather carry water canisters right now for drinking water at some warm and sunny place.:antlers:Quote:
Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
Sorry, knew all that already. The point is not just about the actual claim, it's about the way it was handled - why did it take 20 proffesors gathered in Italy to decide the issue?Quote:
Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro