Water is pretty boring, as far as beverages go. It doesn’t have a catchy jingle, a secret family recipe or even a taste, really. Yet people can’t seem to get enough of it. “I get people in my office every day, every week, saying something like, ‘I’m concerned I’m not hydrated,’” said Lauren Antonucci, a nutritionist in New York City.
Their concerns may be based on conventional wisdom. One well-known recommendation suggests drinking eight glasses of water a day; another warns that if you feel thirsty, you’re already dehydrated. But anxiety about water consumption could also stem from a different, more philosophical source: Hydration is now marketed as a cure for nearly all of life’s woes.
Water, in recent years, has been imbued with the powers of a mysterious elixir. The latest “it” celebrity’s skin care secret? Oh, just water. Feeling sluggish? You probably need more water. Uninspired and utterly hopeless about your career and romantic prospects? Well, have you had any water today? People hydrate as if their reputations depend on it. Some go so far as to track their consumption in a journal, or with a mobile app.
Hydration is the mark of a well-adjusted, successful person. On January 1, Twitter flooded with resolutions to drink more water. But will more conscious hydration really make for a more productive 2020? “There’s no evidence that a little bit of dehydration really impacts anybody’s performance,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosner, a kidney specialist at the University of Virginia who studies overhydration in athletes. For those of us who spend all day at a desk, Rosner said, it’s best to drink only when we feel thirsty.
Overhydrating, he said, isn’t helping anyone. At best, Rosner said, “You pee it out.” At worst, it can cause the sodium and electrolyte levels in your body to drop to dangerously low levels. The condition, hyponatremia, can result in hospitalisation and death. (This doesn’t happen often, but ... good to know.) In 2017, bottled water surpassed soft drinks as the top beverage in the United States by volume, with sales up 7% over the previous year, according to the Beverage Marketing Corp. Since then, sales have continued to rise.
While consumers may have to curb their intake of caffeinated or sugary beverages, they have no reason to put a limit on zero-calorie water.
As single-use plastic water bottles proliferated, an environmentally conscious response emerged: reusable water bottles. Ever-growing environmental and health concerns have turned them into a gift-guide-worthy statement item. For the consumers with big budgets, there’s Yeti. For VSCO girls, there’s the Hydro Flask. Any of them make for a gift that says, “I love you, and I want you to be hydrated.”
Water is a go-to remedy for a variety of ailments: exhaustion, headaches, digestive problems, inflammation, dry skin, acne. “It’s a popular idea among patients and a popular idea in consumer media that hydration equals healthy skin,” said Joshua Zeigler, a dermatologist at Mount Sinai in New York City. But that’s not exactly how it works. “It’s a myth that eight glasses of water are necessary to maintain hydrated skin,” he said.
But if you haven’t quite hit your quota today, don’t worry: Your 2020 isn’t already ruined. The tasty beverages you thought of as dehydrating, like coffee, tea and beer, are actually hydrating.