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Show Water-Drinking: With Meals. Pursuant to a tradition of long standing, it is a common custom to forbid the drinking of water at meal-time. There was a time when such advice appeared meet reasonable. Professor Hawk and his pupils at tho University of Illinois have been investigating, during the past few years, the correctness of tho current attitude toward this question, with results quite at variance with the traditional idea. When the influence of water-drinking with meals was examined by direct experiment on man the alleged direful consequences con-sequences were found miss'ng. There were no apparent ill effects. On the contrary, tho general conclusion from all the findings was that if' water is taken with meals there is a better bet-ter digostic n and a more comp'et , utilization of food. Apronounco.1 improvement in the digestibility of fat was also observed. Since there is a constant tendency, ten-dency, at lesst among perons whoso knowledge of the given subject is slight, to carry to cx-tromes-conclusions derived from experiments, it seems worth while to add a warning against indiscriminate and excessive use of lurge quantities of water. Furthermore, nothing that has been said is intended to lend any support to tho American custom of drinking water that is ice-cold. ice-cold. The experiments of Hawk and his pupils indicate that our ideas with regard to the drinking of water must be revised, but we must wait for reports of observations obser-vations from a larger body of observers. In the meantime, says Tho Journal of the American Medical Association, we may allow water more freely with meals, subject to the individual exceptions which experience brings out. |
