Is drinking sparkling water a healthy alternative? | Hacker News Reader

Is drinking sparkling water a healthy alternative?

english.elpais.com

18 pointsbelter16 comments

Pretty fascinating article as someone who regularly enjoys sparkling water. I have an infuser and buy cans of sparkling water, though I admit it'd be better at some point to invest in a large Co2 system. I just don't have the space today.

My takeaway from the article is that sparkling water is mostly fine, with some minor pros and some minor cons. To me, the biggest one is that you're ingesting slightly acidic water which can erode your enamel over time, so you should be sure to monitor your teeth and get preventative checkups. I doubt, though, that over a lifetime anyone is likely to experience any serious side effect from consuming carbonated water.

To me the pros outweigh the cons. I feel more full (so I eat less), the taste is great, I enjoy burping up the excess Co2, and I'm getting a bunch of water into my system that I might not otherwise.

My dentist called me out on it. I was a heavy sodastream user and she could tell. Demineralization is irreversible. Drink some plain water afterwards to restore the pH balance.

I'm a huge drinker of regular soda, and my doctors absolutely hate that habit, due to calories, caffeine, dental issues, etc.

So recently I was overjoyed to find an appealing brand of sparkling water at the farmer's market, and I started ordering it by the case. It comes in great flavors, and it has nothing added to the water except "natural flavors".

My only fear is that I have no idea what is in those "natural flavors", because it literally could be anything. That is a key phrase used to hide ingredients and pull the wool over the consumer's eyes. It could be completely innocuous or it could be harmful. And I have become accustomed to drinking this sparkling water in large quantities throughout the day, so any significant or long-term effects will make themselves known soon enough.

Try contacting the manufacturer and just ask? If they're well intentioned they'll probably tell you, otherwise...

Just saying "natural flavours" would never fly in my country, you'd have to list exactly what's in it.

Sparkling water dehydrates the heck out of me. Seltzers and mineral waters etc. are worse in that regard than even something like Coca Cola, I think because they tend to be more carbonated.

Do you mean that it make you feel dehydrated? Or are you measuring your intake and output volume / body weight / urine spec grav / some other means of measuring your hydration status?

Certainly symptoms like dry mucous membranes or lightheadedness can be caused by mechanisms other than dehydration, and it would surprise me if sparkling water could cause symptomatic dehydration (as opposed to correcting it, since the main ingredient is water).

I replied to similar comment above. I certainly did not take great pains to accurately measure hydration status. But I did eye ball my urine output and it seems that seltzer really ups it, a lot more than tap water or even a "normal" [not high abv] beer like coors. Maybe my body is uniquely sensitive to highly carbonated liquids. Maybe it's all in my head. But I think it's real.

Some of the sparking waters I've seen have surprisingly high sodium levels. My wife, who is on a low-sodium diet, has to avoid the ones with a lot of sodium.

I have no idea why so much sodium is present.

Depends on what brand you were buying. If it was from a natural mineral source, the sodium is likely present from the source. I don't know what constitutes as a lot of sodium for your wife, but they are normally not huge, anywhere from 3mg/L (Eska), 12mg/L (Perrier), 32mg/L (Pellegrino) to 118mg/L (Grolsteiner) – none will put you over the recommended intake of sodium, and are considered healthy sources of minerals for people with normal diets.

Stop. If it literally dehydrated you, I'd have expired by now. They've been weeks where I only drank sparkling water. There's no way I'd have survived, hell, even today alone.

Some soda water is salty (maybe tonic), but in general it's either just carbonated, or it's carbonated and has a bunch of minerals in it (more expensive mineral water that might have calcium, potassium, etc. in it).

So, typically I drink sparkling with some sort of flavorant, usually a no-sugar lemon lime etc. Maybe it's the flavor/acidity? I don't know, but it seems to be a pretty effective diuretic to me. Purely anecdotal but, I have tried some self-experimentation by drinking 12 ounces of lemon flavor polar compared with 12 ounces of coors, and eyeballing how much I urinate over the next 2 hours. And honestly I feel like I lose more hydration from the seltzer. That doesn't happen to you?

It might be! I piss quite often, no matter what I drink. If there's any comparison it's that tea, coffee and beer are much much worse.

I still refuse to believe that there's a meaningful amount of people who ingest most of their water in a mixture with sugar.

I can believe it, after all, I ingest most of my water in a mixture with roasted ground beans from the rainforest.

And I, with some very poorly treated leaves of some plants. But sill ... sugar?

Interesting article. However, noticed all the external links are being sent through "safe links" at outlook.com.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com