Is it good to drink water immediately after or during eating?
Drink while eating. Europeans drive me batty by swearing that you should eat only after eating.
Well, rao, I can’t tell exactly what you mean, so I’ll have to dodge around a bit.
Drinking water in reasonable amounts is good anytime, whether eating or not.
If your goal is eating less, drinking water before a meal will lend a full feeling and discourage overeating.
If that’s not what you meant, I need more information. 
As a bike racer in training, I’ve read up on eating and drinking on the bike and how best to do it. There are some concentrated foods out there like power bars and gels that have a lot of good stuff in them with little water content, the result is a lot of blood being sent to your stomach to digest it. This can actually have an adverse affect if you are trying to keep all the blood you can going to your legs to keep you moving. Drinking water helps break it down faster and keeps your blood thinner and moving around, if you read the label on a power bar it will say drink 8-12oz with it. My guess is if you eat without drinking water you will probably just get that sleepy feeling.
-Skinny
Well, hooey.
… by swearingthat you should DRINK only after eating.:rolleyes:
What in the world does is this supposed to mean? Digestion does not send blood to your stomach.
Mort Furt, Say what you will, as a fan of beer, I will insist that I only drink after drinking! 
rao, water aids greatly in digestion. Before, during, or after will make little difference.
may I suggest a beer
I think this was in that Diamond chap’s “Fit for Life.” One of his pillars was “It’s bad to drink [anything] while you eat because it washes away digestive enzymes, and thus your body doesn’t realize all the nutrients that it could.”
I haven’t read that book. I’m basing this on a decade-old memory from someone who did read the book–although I can’t say for a fact that he said that that particular aspect of his wacky eating habits came from the book.
Well, I’m only repeating what I’ve read in my research, it might be an oversimplification. To simplify it even more, it takes energy to digest, it takes more energy to digest solid foods then it does to digest watery foods. Blood is pumped all over your body and the stomach uses it too, I didn’t say it’s pumped into your stomach just too the stomach.
When you only have a limited amount of energy in racing, you don’t want any of it going to breaking down big chunks of concentrated food stuff, water breaks it down and lest the stomach digest it faster using less energy.
eating bean and cheese burritos with a lot of water will give you the runs
Having glaucoma and a taste for dried fruit, I guarantee that if you do not drink water with dry food, expecially dehydrated, the food will absorb water from the blood. How do I know? Because in three days I get a headache from the increased eye pressure (better medication has helped in this respect, so no need to worry about me) and the only solution is drinking water for three days, quarts of water. Failure to drink enough water results in poor digestion, leaving a nice quantity for the anaerobic bacteria (result: gas. Incidentally, eating nuts with dried fruit and water keeps you from doing the same thing since the nuts also need water but do not retain the necessary water long enough) and dehydration, which makes you slow witted and lifeless (not just while you are digesting for a couple of hours but until you start drinking, thus I know the food absorbs the water). Oddly I rarely drank water as a child with few bad effects.
Drinking a glass or two of water before eating is a slimmer’s trick to eat less - you’ll feel full faster.