Does iced tea = water?

I drink diet soda therefore I drink water. Diet soda is 95+% water, but I don't log it as such. I don't really care. If I am thirsty, I drink. As long as I get my 64 of water, I am fine. Which reminds me. "Nurse, I am ready for my proctoclysis now" Look it up and you will get the joke.

I drink quite a bit of iced tea and want to know if I should be counting it towards my daily water total or is the water in addition to the tea? Also, what about diet soda? Can it be counted towards your water?

I do not count anything that has caffeine in it because caffeine is a diuretic (A diuretic provides a means of forced diuresis which elevates the rate of urination. There are several categories of diuretics. All diuretics increase the excretion of water from bodies, although each class does so in a distinct way) which causes the body to flush fluids instead of using it for hydration.

If your pee stinks and has real color (not just a tinge of yellow) you are not hydrated and need to rethink your definition of water. If it's fine, whatever you're doing is working or you.

I can't believe this keeps coming up and keeps being misrepresented. Several people continue to post actual research and it is routinely ignored for conventional wisdom and semantics ("If tea was water it would be called water...").

Do what you want for yourselves, People, but why continue to give advice to others that has been proven wrong?

If it's calorie free, count it as water. I haven't seen a medical study on this but my source is Lindora (lindora.com).

Lindora has a medically-supervised weight loss plan that has helped hundreds of thousands of people lose weight over the past 40 years. My GF runs their largest clinic so I got lots of pointers when I was losing weight.

When I was losing weight I drank mostly coffee and iced tea. I'm just not that into water, even if it's been purified with scotch or bourbon. :-)

Many folks claim that you shouldn't count iced tea as water because caffeine is a diuretic. That's true. It's also true that water is poisonous. Yes, water will kill you…and not just from drowning.

What's missing from the statements "caffeine is a diuretic" is that they don't disclose the conditions under which caffeine is a diuretic nor have I ever seen anyone cite the impact on different individuals nor has the dosage been addressed. Other than that, the statements were completely valid!

I can't cite the source but, since I try to avoid drinking plain water, I looked into the diuretic effect. I found a few articles (not blog postings or posts here on MFP) that said that the diuretic effect was low and was minimal for anyone who used caffeine on a regular basis.

I realize that I've been vague so a few seconds on Google and…

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/caffeinated-drinks/AN01661
To me, Mayo is a trusted source but the page doesn't give any info on how much of a diuretic effect.



http://www.medicinenet.com/caffeine/page3.htm

Like the Mayo article, no mention of how much of a diuretic nor was it controlled - the participants were told to not use caffeine which does not mean that the subjects did not consume caffeine.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/537881-diuretic-effect-of-caffeine-in-soft-drinks/?utm_source=popslideshow&utm_medium=a1
Again, minimal metrics.


http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/handouts/caffeine.html
Addresses the issue but no metrics. "There is no conclusive evidence that caffeine in beverage form is dehydrating. Its diuretic effects are usually compensated for by the beverage's fluid content. "

From the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/health/nutrition/04real.html
They cite sources.


From the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine

And it has citations (which I haven't checked)
The money shot - "Caffeine has diuretic properties when administered to people who are not used to it, but regular users develop a strong tolerance to this effect, and studies have generally failed to support the common notion that ordinary consumption of caffeinated beverages contributes significantly to dehydration."

I work in a hospital where tracking fluid intake and output is a daily requirement, so I'm going with the slightly personal but very observable answer that we use as a rough guideline - if your pee is light-yellow, you're fine. If it's dark, then you need to drink more fluid. Iced tea is probably fine if you're drinking enough of it... and a little diuresis never hurts if you're trying to lose (water) weight ;-)

I say, if you drink anything other than plain water, you track it in your diary.

We dont need WATER. we need FLUID!

Sigh....

If I only logged water as water I'd die of water toxicity.

And if tea dehydrated you, I'd be a desiccated corpse.

Nice to see you quoting the good Doctor.

Here's a link to another of his papers:

http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/283/5/R993.full

It's an old wives tale that iced tea doesn't count as water. As a matter of fact, anything with water in it counts as water. Back in the old ages, NOBODY drank water, they drank mostly beer and wines and noone ever dehydrated after only drinking those. Why? Because there is water in them! Iced tea has a miniscule amount of cafeine in it to dehydrate you. How many people per day check into the emergency ward at a hospital because all they've been drinking is beer, Coke, coffee, and tea? Seriously, it's an ignorant myth that needs to end.

I don't see the point of tracking water. Drink when you're thirsty.