Bella Adams
Can I drink water with food? Nutritionists’ advice on this issue varies. Most often, we wash down our food because of a commonplace habit. People usually drink tea with sweets after a meal. A prominent American nutritionist, Herbert Shelton, believed that drinking water during or after meals weakens the effect of saliva on food.
Human saliva begins the process of digesting food in the mouth, and if we drink food, saliva is diluted with water, and this stage of digestion is skipped.
Furthermore, water dilutes digestive juices, takes away nutrients intended for digestion, and reduces the concentration of digestive enzymes in the stomach, which in turn slows down and hinders digestion.
As a result, food untreated by gastric juices does not go through the necessary stages of digestion in the stomach and enters the lower parts of the digestive system, where it is subject to decay, fermentation, and bacterial decomposition, followed by absorption of these products into the bloodstream and, as a result, poisoning of the body and the development of diseases.
The exception may be very dry food – it can be washed down with small sips, and a little water. Never drink milk with food, as it interferes with digestion and causes fermentation in the intestines! When you wash down your food with cold drinks (tap water, iced drinks), you stimulate peristalsis, as a result of which the time spent in the stomach is significantly reduced, and you will soon want to eat again, and undigested food enters the intestines, where putrefactive processes occur that cause gas, constipation, and disease.
In no case should you wash down fatty foods with cold drinks? After all, when the temperature drops, the fat freezes, in our case, it will freeze in the digestive system.
The same can be said for ice cream and cold cocktails: if you eat them immediately after a meal, the food will also enter the intestines undigested.
But if you drink before meals, you can lose weight! This is an added bonus, in addition to the health benefits. Water drunk before meals remove weakened digestive juices from the stomach, activates digestion, and satisfies the first bout of hunger, which leads to satiety with less food. It is recommended to drink 10-15 minutes before meals. If you drink juice, it is better to drink it after 25-30 minutes.
As for how long you can drink after a meal, it all depends on the composition of the food, since the length of time food stays in the stomach depends on the speed of its digestion. For example, fruits are digested very quickly, and you can drink them after 20 minutes if you want.
After “slow” carbohydrates (bread, cereals, rice, pasta, etc.), it is recommended to drink in 2-3 hours. After heavy protein foods that take a long time to digest (meat, fish) – after 4-5 hours. But, you see, these rules are not easy to follow. The main thing is not to drink your food right away.
If you have the desire to quench your thirst, we can advise you to rinse your mouth and take 2-3 small sips.
If you have decided to get rid of the habit of drinking food, then the first thing you need to do is stop drinking AFTER eating. Drinking WHILE eating can be left at the transitional stage. But you need to learn, or rather accustom yourself to “chewing” the liquid in your mouth (as if mixing it with saliva) and only then swallow. As the Chinese teach, food should be drunk (chewed to a liquid state) and liquid should be eaten.
By the way, all wild animals drink first and eat only after a while. Well, their instincts are definitely right! If you really can’t eat without drinking, try to limit yourself to a small amount of plain water or green herbal tea without sugar.
