Most folks accept that water is an essential element to stay healthy, yet few people ask why. Contrary to a number of water-related myths, there is no scientific evidence that supports the notion that drinking eight glasses a day leads to better health.

What is the nutritional value and content of water?

Here’s a flashback to your middle school science class — water is made up of H2O. That’s two hydrogen atoms and one Oxygen atom.

Water is healthy, but not nutritious. It does not contain any calories, fat, protein, or carbs.

The body needs and uses water to function, so the value for water is better understood in terms of replenishment. The body constantly loses fluid by sweating, breathing, and during the process of excrement. Drinking water replaces that loss liquid and facilitates a normal functioning of the body.

What are the health benefits of drinking water?

About 60 percent of the human body is composed of water. It makes sense that regularly ingesting water promotes the ability for your body to function normally.

• Water regulates body fluids
• Water helps with digestion and makes you feel full (so you eat less)
• Water prevents muscle fatigue and dehydration
• Water supports the kidney’s process of ridding the body of toxins

Is drinking water fun?

We know drinking water is essential to health but why does drinking eight glasses of water per day so challenging?

The answer is related to simple survival mechanisms. Why do you think we have taste buds? Scientists believe taste buds serve a basic function of survival. Taste buds help determine whether we should swallow what’s already in the mouth.

Plain water is odorless, tasteless, and mostly colorless. So unless you’re quenched, your taste buds are not naturally excited to drink a glass of water, let alone eight per day.

Plenty of people try to solve this problem — there are water tracker apps, flavored water, and sugary sports drinks all attempting to inspire you to drink more water. But if taste buds were the only motivator of your daily food and liquid consumption, you’d be in trouble. Self-awareness has to drive you to drink more water. If you weren’t aware of nutrition, how would you know what is good, bad, and necessary for you?

When we’re thirsty, we want a drink but it’s human to opt for something that quenches thirst AND good tasting too.

How to Make Water Fun to Drink

Water is essential to life and healthy to drink yet the temptation of satisfying taste buds by consuming sugary drinks is strong. What if you could make water tasty without doing more harm than good?

Extracting essences of fruits and vegetables is a popular method of making water tasty and more ‘fun’ to drink. Essences are obtained from plant sources, and flavors are separated from unwanted sugar, color, pulp, and extraneous components. The technique involves a mixture of pressing, heating, cooling, filtering, and dissolving.
What a health-conscious person does not want is artificial ingredients, processing aids, preservatives, sweeteners, gluten, animal products, or MSG in their drinks. While such added ingredients can make the drink tastier than water, consumption is detrimental to one’s health. The ‘sweet spot’ involves making water tasty while keeping it healthy for all!