Does Tea Count

MacMadame

Water is water...................if you add anything else to it, then it is no longer just water, so it shouldn't be counted as your daily water intake.

By the time it gets to your organs, it's plain water. The other stuff gets separated out as part of digestion. Your kidneys don't know that the water had some flavoring when it hit your stomach.

what if you add sugar or honey? what do you log that as?

You log the fluid as water and the sugar or honey as sugar or honey. At least that's what I would do. I log my FUZE drinks in my food diary and also check off the equivalent "cups" of water in the water section.

AdymondNtheRuff

This was a very good question because i drink 32oz of tea and 16 of coffee daily and i do log it as my water intake... and it that
s wrong oooops!!!!:sad:

selbyhutch

For me... and according to my doctor... water has to be clean H2O.

00trayn

I've been logging my tea in my water count. I add a bit of natural german rock sugar to it for sweetness, but I usually drink 2 cups of 12 oz daily, sometimes more if I made iced tea instead. It's herbal tea so no caffeine. I also drink water on top of it, so in combination I'm always over my 8 cups a day, usually closer to 10-12.

astridfeline

http://www.berkeleywellness.com/html/wl/2010/wlAskExperts0410.html

Ask the Experts
April 2010 Archive2007200820092010


Q: Are caffeinated beverages dehydrating? Do they count towards my eight-a-day glasses of water?

A: Many people think they can’t count coffee, tea, and colas as part of fluid intake, because caffeine promotes urination briefly. But you don’t end up with a net loss of water from drinking moderate amounts of caffeinated beverages. In other words, they don’t dehydrate you.

For instance, in a study from the University of Nebraska Medical Center a decade ago, healthy adults showed the same "hydration status" (as determined from urine analysis and other tests) when they drank caffeinated colas and/or coffee as when they drank only water and/or fruit drinks. And in its 2005 report on water needs, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which advises the government about health issues, including dietary intakes, concluded that "caffeinated beverages appear to contribute to the daily total water intake similar to that contributed by noncaffeinated beverages."

In any case, it’s a myth that you need to drink eight glasses of water a day. There’s no scientific backing for this rule. The IOM report confirmed this, too. People normally get enough fluids by drinking when they’re thirsty—though older people should drink water before they get thirsty, especially in the heat, since thirst is a less reliable indicator as we age. And other beverages besides water (including caffeinated ones), as well as foods (such as fruits and vegetables), help meet fluid needs.

arewethereyet

Here is what my doctor of 25 yrs told me. He expained that the clear water flushes your body. Not only your kidneys but think of your mouth, throat, upper GI, stomach.......he likened it to washing your clothes in Iced Tea.

The clothes would be technically clean, but would have a slight dinge from the tantric acid in the Tea.

He said for hydration purposes oranges, watermelon, celery......anything with fluid counts, but for water itself-it should be clear.

I like my doc's metaphors!!

xonophone

Think of it like this - if you drink 8oz of water and then munched on some tea leaves, you'd count the water, right?

So how does soaking the tea leaves in the water change things at all?

By that logic, one could also say that if I drank 8 oz of water and then munched on some whole oats I would count the water, therefore cooking my oatmeal in water count! :laugh: Personally I only count water as water. Plus, I don't feel as if my thirst has been quenched when I drink tea,coffee, broth, etc. Anything with sugar or salt in it just makes me thirstier. Just my personal $.02.

MacMadame

By that logic, one could also say that if I drank 8 oz of water and then munched on some whole oats I would count the water, therefore cooking my oatmeal in water count! :laugh:

It does actually. At least as far as your body is concerned.

Something to keep in mind is that there is no scientific support for the idea that we have to drink 64 oz of water a day. Our bodies definitely need water and they are designed to extract it from the food and drink that we put into it. How much we actually need varies based on our body size and our activities. The only reason people tracking their water intake don't worry about the water in fruits and oatmeal and other food is that it's too hard to count. Since 8 - 8 oz glasses a day is only an estimate of an individual's needs, it's not worth trying to count every drop of water our bodies intake from every source.

And, with all due respect to the doctor of the poster above, but drinking tea is NOTHING like washing your clothes in tea. Our digestive system extracts the water from the tea at which point it is water. H2O. Chemically indistinguishable from the plain water that we might also drink.