Does iced tea = water?

Water is water. If diet soda or tea counted as water, they'd be called "water". The caffeine in those things actually DEHYDRATE you, so for each time you drink one of those, it takes about double that amount in water to rehydrate yourself.

It has long been thought that coffee and other caffeine-containing beverages are dehydrating and don’t count toward your daily fluid intake. In fact, some go as far as recommending one cup of water for every cup of Joe you consume. Most of us know that caffeine is a diuretic (it makes us have to go pee), but does it deplete our bodily fluids?

The Straight Talk
In his review, “Caffeine, Body Fluid-Electrolyte Balance, and Exercise Performance,” Lawrence E. Armstrong, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of Connecticut disproves the notion that caffeinated beverages rob us of our precious fluids. By reviewing the scientific research on the subject, he concludes that although caffeine, like water, is a mild diuresis (it increases excretion of urine), moderate caffeine consumption does not produce a “fluid-electrolyte imbalance” that can affect health or exercise performance. Furthermore, we retain roughly the same amount of fluid after drinking a caffeinated beverage as we do after drinking water.

Even more encouraging for habitual coffee consumers is the finding that those with caffeine tolerance have reduced likelihood that a fluid electrolyte imbalance will occur. The more regular your caffeine habit, the more fluid your body is conditioned to retain.

Other findings support his conclusions. A small study done at the University of Nebraska tested the body weight, urine output, and blood of eighteen subjects after they consumed caffeinated and non-caffeinated beverages. They determined that there was “no significant differences in the effect of various combinations of beverages on hydration status of healthy adult males.” The Institute of Medicine expert panel on water and electrolyte intake asserts that the diuretic effects of caffeine are transient, and that coffee, tea, and colas can contribute to total water intake.



Via http://www.divinecaroline.com/22178/46361-coffee-makes-dehydrated-say-what#ixzz1ZGBUXtKA

Dr. Valtin specifically investigated the research evidence behind the most popular myths about our fluid needs.

All fluids count. The popular papers left “little doubt” that most advocates of the 8 glasses of water a day mean to convey that people should drink water per se, and specifically exclude caffeinated or sweetened drinks from the daily count. But this is a misperception, he wrote. He found strong scientific evidence that all fluids count, including water, coffee, tea, soft drinks, milk, juices and beer.

Dehydrating caffeine myth. Similarly, he found that recent experiments have “cast serious doubt on the often asserted diuretic role of caffeinated drinks,” he said. Caffeine had no significant effects on any of the variables that measure dehydration in one such study conducted at the Center for Human Nutrition in Omaha, for example, and the investigators concluded that “advising people to disregard caffeinated beverages as part of the daily fluid intake is not substantiated.” The diuretic effect of caffeine in drinks and moderate alcohol is trivial compared to the amount of water they contain.

We need less than we think. Among most adults, he found, caffeinated and alcoholic beverages constitute half or slightly more of their daily fluid intake, meaning the average adult drinks a respectable 1,700 ml and this doesn’t include the water from foods and metabolism, which also count. Yet, the medical research indicates that even 1,700 ml may be as much as a full liter more than what sedentary adults actually need to maintain physiological homeostasis, he said.

He couldn’t find any article where 8x8 was recommended on the basis of scientific evidence. The idea seemed to appear out of nowhere. He did, however, find one possible source for a misinterpretation that may have been repeated, like urban legends often are. The 1945 Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Sciences had written in its Recommended Dietary Allowances:

A suitable allowance of water for adults is 2.5 liters daily in most instances. An ordinary standard for diverse persons is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food. Most of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.
Dr. Valtin believes this last sentence may have been ignored, leaving the incorrect interpretation of these early dietary guidelines that eight glasses of water to be drunk each day.

The main ingredient in Coke is water...someone wise told me so

As long as there isn't much caffeine, you are fine counting it.

Drinks with high caffeine like Coke and black tea and coffee cause you to pee more than you gain in water... so don't count those.

But green tea or herbal teas have negligible amounts of caffeine usually, so I count them.

Oh, don't count booze for the same reason.