People who refuse to drink water, no matter what | Hacker News Reader

People who refuse to drink water, no matter what

melmagazine.com

48 pointsmacbookaries74 comments

What kind of water are these people drinking? I don't understand how you could be dehydrated and hate the taste of water unless it's severely contaminated. A glass of water when you need it is the best damn thing ever.

I'm pretty used to crazy people existing, but this one just does not compute.

Water taste can vary depending on the municipality and how they treat and transmit it. Look at how Flint fucked up their water supply. I could see people who live there never trusting water from a tap ever again.

I have an uncle-in-law (is that a thing?) that exclusively drinks coffee and Diet Coke. I thought he was joking until we went on a 10 day family vacation, and I never once him drink anything else. Does not compute indeed.

If you have a good water supply, absolutely.

A lot of treated water tastes horribly of chlorine. Untreated water in some areas reeks of sulfur.

If you grew up in one of these places, dinking only juice and soda, then not even wanting to drink bottled water is conceivable.

A relative in Ohio only drank Fresca - the water from the tap smelled like rotten eggs. If I lived there I’d start to be disgusted by water too.

I mainly only drink water, but note that not everywhere in the world can you "drink" the water. My grandfather arrived at a US airforce base in Japan with his family in tow. This was in 1955 or so. They had a nice house on base. But the first time they turned on the kitchen sink, clear water came out... but also worms.

I spent most of my teenage years in several small towns along the Texas gulf coast. In most of these small towns, there was city supplied water, but it did not come from some water company that had ran thousands of miles of water mains. Instead every couple of blocks, there was a "water well" and a large 500-1000 gallon water/pressure tank which supplied water to a couple of blocks. I was told that since we were only a couple of miles from the beach that the wells were not that deep. I'd heard figures of "just 30ft", but not sure if that was true. Nonetheless, that was some nasty water. I still drank it though. Sometime in 1995 we got a brita water pitcher, it helped, but not much. Almost no one drank the stuff.

The worst case, I was visiting a friend that had moved into deep east Texas. The water was horrid. Almost impossible to drink. I took a shower that night, and it couldn't even rinse the soap off of me. My first day there, I mainly only drank beer. After going to bed late (still covered in soap), I woke up the next morning with a partial headache and a huge thirst from having no water the day before. I stumbled through the house to the kitchen sink. Found a large cup, filled it to the brim. Took a big gulp. The water was cool and quenching (or so I thought), but it was amiss. The taste, the thickness. I couldn't do it. I started gagging heavily. Nothing came up as my stomach was empty.. but still.. the water made a very thirsty man nearly puke. I took a step back and looked at my other options. There was still some cheap beer left, and there was a 2 liter bottle of diet pepsi on top of the fridge. I can't remember what my choice was, perhaps I just passed out...

> the first time they turned on the kitchen sink, clear water came out... but also worms.

Whatever water tank/deposit they used had not been cleaned in ages. Surprising considering recruits are basically free workforce.

Ew. Ew ew ew. And here I was, thinking that water sanitation was a third world slum/war-destroyed country issue...well consider me informed.

"Water tastes like nothing. Why would I drink nothing? What’s the point?"

The point is that water is fundamental to our survival. I just can't understand how someone who is presumably fairly intelligent could say something like this.

Also it's not true that water tastes like nothing, unless it's distilled water.

I can't understand how you can't understand this. How can someone of normal intelligence not understand that many things contain or are made out of water therefore the person saying that meant he/she doesn't drink pure water. He/she probably drinks juice. This is so obvious. How can a person of normal intelligence not be aware of this? Perhaps such a person is aware... he's just being human and like all humans sometimes does things that are harmless and slightly illogical.

Usually I'd be very sympathetic to this argument, but this person admits further down they drink far too little in general. I'm not perfect by a long shot, but I'd like to think I've got the fundamentals down.

You could say the same for salt. It's fundamental to our survival, yet I tend to consume it mixed with other food, rather than on its own. I haven't seen anyone but farm animals use a salt lick. It's fine to consume water mixed with things.

Some of the people quoted do have serious problems, but I think that person was just contrasting choosing pure water and flavoured water when the choice is available. Either choice is almost entirely water, so there's little difference from the survival perspective.

It's hard to say if that person has a problem or not. All we really have to go on is their own interpretation of their urine color.

I feel like in the past this would anger me so much that people were wrong or being dumb. Now I just feel sorry for them. They're walking Darwin award nominees.

The quest for more sugar in everything now bears fruit. If these people are not addicted, nobody is.

Exactly my thought after reading this - they don't hate the taste of water, they hate the taste of not-sugar.

That's way too simplistic (and judgmental). I'm not fond of plain water, but "hates the taste of not-sugar" doesn't explain why I'd find unsweetened tea or lemonade preferable. Yes, really. Heck, I'd find salt water preferable in terms of taste, though it's a bad idea for other reasons. What theory do you have for why you're still a superior person?

I'm not a superior person at all, and I never meant to imply that. But you ought to know that unsweetened tea and unsweetened lemonade still has plenty of sodium (or in the case of actual lemon juice added, fructose sugars (which are not required to be listed on the labels)), which is also a flavor enhancer. My point is that it's not water that tastes bad, it's that some people get so used to salt and sugar in everything they eat that plain old water tastes gross.

> I'd find salt water preferable in terms of taste

I'm absolutely sure that's true for varying levels of salt, as shown by your preference for unsweetened tea.

Salt or sugar, they're both flavor enhancers, which was the point of my post.

Also, it's entirely possible that people who hate water live in places where a lot of minerals and iron are in the water, which is common (and a lot of people don't like that irony taste). Or, the reverse where people grew up in areas _with_ a particular mineral in the water which is no longer there. Personally, a nice ceramic filter on a Big Berkeley, put into the fridge for a day, ooooh man I'm gonna go hydrate currently.

Edit: I should have figured from your aggressive tone that a reply wasn't going to be productive, but after reading your bio - WOW. Feel free to let this thread die!

I've been in Phoenix for the last couple of months and the water here is disgusting. It tastes terrible even after softening and filtering. My hands and body feel slimy after washing. After living somewhere with good tasting and large quantities of fresh water and then coming here it's very easy for me to believe that people would rather drink nothing than water. My one year old daughter loves water over everything else and even she won't drink the water here.

I feel like I could've easily been one of those people if I had been raised on the tap water from my town, which was absolutely vile (We received a non-zero number of letters over the years from the county or federal government proudly proclaiming, "Good news! The water in your town is no longer dangerously toxic!"). However, my father hated the town water so much that he paid for gallons of water to be delivered to our house from a cleaner source. A poorer family might not have been able to afford that luxury, and grown up thinking all water tasted like sewage.

I received a lot of ribbing from my friends during childhood for having a water-cooler in our house. But our water tasted good.

I've never been able to get a real answer: does sparkling water hydrate you the same way flat water does? Also if there are "natural flavors" in the sparking water, how does that affect hydration. I personally don't mind drinking water, and always do during/after workouts, but prefer flavored sparking water if the option is available. Just wondering if drinking a few cups of that per day is the same as drinking a few cups of flat water per day.

According to CNN[1] and a scientist in Scotland- yes! It hydrates pretty much equally, though it's slightly worse for your teeth. Not nearly as bad as regular soda/pop/etc, though.

Missed the second part. The article doesn't address it, but from my knowledge flavoring shouldn't affect the hydration unless the flavor includes other components like sugar/acid/salts/caffeine/etc.

[1]: https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/19/health/sparkling-water-hydrat...

From what I've been able to find out, yes, it's pretty much the same. But you have to be aware that mineral water has potassium and magnesium, sometimes even sodium and calcium. If you're drinking it as a substitute of plain water all day you are at risk of kidney stones and kidney damage (this is from a conversation with a nephrologist, but I haven't found any research paper talking about it).

Sparkling water seems to be inoffensive. However, if you're going to add sugary flavor to it, remember that you need to add a lot of sugar to CO2-infused water to be able to taste it (that's why sodas have so much sugar but don't taste like it). Be careful with sugar and sparkling water.

It’s the nitrates and nitrites in mineral water that you should also consider.

But that’s something an oncologist would tell you to worry about, not the nephrologist ;)

Per volume? Not quite, but not really measurably different. The CO2 dissolved in the solution has to take up some small amount of space. Otherwise it's basically identical; our bodies interact with enough CO2 in a day that you simply aren't making a dent.

"Natural flavors" are essentially adding sugar and a couple chemicals to the water. You can think of it as being effectively the same as drinking an equivalent amount of H2O and taking a tablet that contained all of the "natural flavors". No real difference in hydration, but taking in a bunch of sugar after a workout is generally frowned upon. Go get some protein instead.

Pedantic note: this is not actually true, it's possible and normal to dissolve something in water, increasing the density and not the volume.

Like what? Sugar increases volume of water.

Sodium chloride decreases the volume of water at saturation by nearly 2%

"Natural flavors" is in seltzer water with 0 sugar. It is also advertised to have "no artificial sweeteners", which I realize might be bending the truth somehow, but I'm pretty sure food and drink companies can't outright lie about that stuff. From what I've gathered it doesn't affect insulin levels like the artificial sweeteners from diet soda does, but I also can't figure out what it actually is.

Side-note: sugar after a workout is the best time for sugar. You want to replenish muscle-glycogen as soon as possible and sugar is a fast track to that. Obviously you should opt for fruit over a Gatorade or sweets though.

Be aware though, they can advertise 0 calories as long as it rounds to 0, so a couple calories of sugar is "0 calorie natural flavor".

So your intention is to skip all of the other nutrients your body needs to recover after a workout? That doesn't seem wise. I guess it's your body though.

Taking in sugar both during and after a workout is important. However, there is the problem that "workout" leaves a lot to interpretation. Do you do 20 minutes on a stationary bike? Do you walk around for an hour from circuit machine to circuit machine, with less than 10 minutes actually spent during sets? If you answered yes, then sugar isn't what you need. You don't need anything at all, except some real exercise.

If on the other hand, your exercise is strenuous, and depletes your bloodstream's glucose, and your liver's short-term supply of glucose, then you absolutely need sugar. Otherwise, your body will efficiently convert whatever is at hand to sugar. The most "at hand" ingredient from your body's point of view, is your lean muscle mass. You don't want to lose that. However if you have these kind of exercise sessions, then you already know this, so keep on doing what you're doing.

A real meal has everything your body needs to recover. Shooting back some sort of energy drink is a stop-gap, at best, and prevents you from noticing your body's needs, at worst. Hence ending with "Go find some protein". If you're considering whether or not your muscle-glucose levels are going to be replenished, you've already missed the plot.

I drink chocolate milk, usually about 1 hour in. After the exercise is complete, a real meal is exactly what you need. No arguments there at all.

While you're training someone(or yourself) for any type of endurance event(eg triathlon), it's not uncommon to toss them a sugary(decaffeinated!) soda or juice. You're goal is to make sure they never exhaust that available supply of glucose until the event is complete. If they do, along with cannibalizing their muscle mass, they're going to have short-term discomfort(cramps, mental fogginess).

Would these people refuse to drink water 200 years ago? If not, they would most likely die. It's almost as if there is some evolutionary element at work here...bad decisions take you out of the gene pool the rest of us are splashing around in. Unfortunately at this day in age, we find ways to keep these humans alive, and empower them to share their suicidal preferences via the internet.

I think 200 years ago people were mostly trying to stay away from water as much as possible not to get sick. They were drinking beers, meads and all kind of stuff that was somehow preprocessed. Still in a lot of places good water from tap is not reality.

Indeed. Cholera was a serious problem. in 1854, Dr John Snow, suspecting that contaminated water rather than "miasma" was the cause, mapped the cholera deaths in Soho, London: https://www1.udel.edu/johnmack/frec682/cholera/

The closer to the Broad Street pump, the higher the death rate, with one exception: the nearby brewery. The workers at the brewery drank beer instead of water. (The water used to brew beer is boiled, killing the bacteria.)

Dr Snow had the handle removed from the pump, ending the epidemic. There's now a pub nearby called the John Snow (in what is now called Broadwick Street), and a kerbstone made of pink granite where the pump was.

That's not really fair. It could be entirely true (and not hypocritical) that they would drink water if their lives depended on it. (Well, maybe except the one who keeps ending up in the ER.)

There's countless modern niceties that are incompatible with 19th century life. I know lots of people working in technology today who would die in 1818, too, unless they drastically changed their lifestyle, and learned dozens of new skills.

I thought this might be a prank article but someone commented here that they don't like to drink water either. I had no idea.

Also: what's with the annoying gifs that don't add to the article but do move and distract you when reading? That's one reason I thought this was a prank article.

I pretty much only drank soda until I was in my 30s and started to have problems with reflux and heart palpitations from caffeine. Now I have a cup of coffee in the morning and water the rest of the day. I can’t even drink a full can of coke any more without feeling a little nauseous.

Provided this article isn't a prank or parody...

Talk about first world problems.

Hong Kong flushes with sea water because of the lack of fresh water sources, and these people complain about it because either the lack of taste, or the metallic taste (from bad pipes?)

I knew someone like this, they changed after passing multiple kidney stones.

Seems like a good startup opportunity. Break your bad habits by forcing a small bluetooth-enabled stone through your urethra.

As long as the water-haters are mixing ice cubes, tea, juice etc. in their "waters" I think they'll be fine. I am going to assume this is a prank. Although, if more blogs and news channels and talk shows pick this up, I guarantee this will become a "thing" within 6 months. The internet is exhausting sometimes.

I love to drink water from the tap as a kid. Then at some point I discovered carbonated bottled water and tap water started to taste bad for me. It never changed back. Even if I buy non-carbonated bottled water it tastes as bad as tap water. I can easily drink tap water after it's boiled (warm or even cool). Might be psychological.

Heating tap water will quickly drive off the chlorine.

Or running through a very simple and cheap carbon filter, which also takes out a lot of other off-flavors.

Looking for clues that this is parody, here's a candidate ("Big Water"):

She’s been carted off in an ambulance after fainting at the gym, after suffering a panic attack and after experiencing extreme exhaustion from a minor cold — but she says she still won’t fall for Big Water’s scare tactics. “Even if there are absolutely no other options [besides water], I usually just opt to not drink anything,” she tells me.

Replace "drink water" with "minimize greenhouse gas emissions," "exercise," "eat less junk," etc.

Basically, the world is full of people determined to sabotage their own lives.

Big water is real though. It's the bottled water industry.

I'm a pretty non-picky eater, but I feel like I can usually empathize with other people's picky eating habits. Not drinking water however, is something that I just can't wrap my mind around.

I was like this for a while until we got an RO unit with a water polisher. Tap water tastes like chlorinated algae and bottled water is just bottled tap water unless you get something expensive. Carbon filters like Brita don't really help that much with the taste. I ended up drinking mostly flavored water like crystal light and Mio.

RO water changed all that. It is delicious! Put a jug of RO water in the fridge and it's the best thing ever.

  All these people I could look up were American, which I don't think is a coincidence. There's been a lot said about Americans lack of food culture, and I think this is a symptom of that.
  Just as some people eat fast food every day, these people always opt for the unhealthier alternative when it comes to their drinks. A strong food culture and tradition would go a long way towards teaching people to enjoy foods which are actually good for their bodies.

This doesn't seem that weird.

From what I understand it's very rare to drink water in Chinese culture because it was historically necessary to boil it. You drink tea, booze and soup, but not water. If someone with first hand experience can chime in on this I'd appreciate it.

Same in historical Europe and America - alcoholic beverages were preferred over water for health reasons.

Is it really that surprising that people who are raised on soda won't take up water once they reach adulthood? Imagine the same situation but with regular food. Would you switch to the healthier but totally tasteless and bland alternative? I doubt it -- I know I wouldn't. I would keep eating steaks and vegetables over a tasteless mush.

Arguable steak and vegetables are some of the healthiest food you can eat, if they are high quality...

So are milk and vegetables juice (to a degree). I'm sure you can convince those people to drop soda and energy drinks. It's the move to water that is probably a hard sell.

A reasonable amount of steak cooked with minimal added fat (skip the butter basting) and roasted vegetables seasoned lightly with salt is a pretty healthy meal. Throw in a salad with some undressed raw, leafy greens and you've got a solid meal.

After giving up diet soda I also hated drinking water because I found that, as backwards as it sounds, it gave me dry mouth and actually made me feel dehydrated. I drank it anyways but I discovered adding a tiny pinch of salt to it made those symptoms disappear and I don't mind drinking water any more.

This is the first thing it reminded me of: ProZD's product review of drinking water. It's quite funny. https://youtu.be/4ZK8Z8hulFg

These people seem mental but when I grew up in Germany (born '66) nobody drank tap water. It was either sparkling water or some other kind of drink. Maybe it's changed now, not sure.

I get it. It's like why eat bread when you can eat a sandwich? Water is still entering there bodies... I don't find this to be that incomprehensible as some people here do.

These people -- do they hate water, or do they find it too boring?

I briefly dated a woman like that. I met her in an Aikido class. (She was quite advanced in Judo.) Sometimes I really liked the way she smelled. Sometimes I really didn't.

So may stories about tap water being undrinkable. Why not filter and/or boil it? You can make gallons of perfectly drinkable water easily.

A lot of the people you're talking to won't even throw a prepared meal in the oven instead of having one delivered. Boiling water is definitely not going to be on the to-do list.

Reading this made me thirsty, no lie.

Yeah, I just downed my entire bottle.

Had a colleague like this: coffee and stout only. Nothing else. Never drank water.

my dude

Purity Of Essence

My people. I can't stand drinking plain water. I need some kind of taste.

I end up drinking a LOT of iced tea, and G2 gatorade when I'm exercising.

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