This is something that has bothered me a long time, and maybe this is the time and place to have it clarified with finality. The problem is that I’ve heard diametrically conflicting advice - it’s good to drink with meals, and it’s bad to drink with meals. The best I can do with this is conclude is that with ‘certain’ foods, it’s advisable to drink water, but with others not? Is this correct? If so, what foods should be watered down (so to speak)? If it’s best to avoid drinking at mealtime should drinking be done before or after, and how long before or after the meal?
I have never heard that it is bad to drink water with meals as a general practice.
I can’t even imagine what reasons anyone could suggest for thinking it bad.
Where did you read or hear this and why should water be avoided?
One of the fad diet tenets (Harvey Diamond’s “Fit for Life,” maybe) was that drinking water with meals was bad because it washed away enzymes that aid in digestion. Didn’t read it myself, but I was told that by someone who did.
But every fad diet has a different set of principles. If they all agreed, you’d only need one.
Personally, I have had some issues with heartburn if I drink a lot of water after eating. Because of that, I try to drink a glass of water before a meal.
I have had people ask me if I’m doing that to lose weight. I guess the idea is to “fill-up” on water and eat less. (Maybe it’s just a subtle suggestion that I lose weight.)
This is insanity. Run, do not walk, away from that book as fast as you can.
It’s probably not Fit for Life since Amazon says:
Probably surpasses Raw Foodism in terms of craziness/idiocy, though – never thought I’d come across such a plan.
I drink water for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner. I am 78 now and it hasn’t hurt me yet. Plus, I drink water in between meals too. Water is good! 
I can’t remember a specific site but I have heard it is bad to drink water because it dilutes the digestive acids in your stomach. I have also heard drinking water aids digestion so I too am curious if either of these is true.
The stomach exists primarily as a holding place for food to go through some initial pre-digestive processes (breakdown, fermentation, et cetera). Relatively little absorption of nutrients actually occurs there. Food will remain in the stomach for between 30 minutes and a few hours, while water will pass through in spare minutes. (The stomach lining absorbs a little bit of water, but mostly to act as a solvent for digestive processes; primary water absorption is done in the small and large intestines.) Drinking any normal amount of water will not significantly interfere with digestive processes.
The most rational reason I’ve heard extended regarding the “harm” of drinking fluid with meals is that it lubricates the esophagus and allows you to comfortably swallow food that has not been fully chewed. This does prevent compete digestion and/or encourages overeating (by eating too fast). With most foods you shouldn’t have to drink water in order to eat, and in fact most prepared starch-based foods and fresh vegetables have sufficient water in them that you shouldn’t need an extra source of water to digest them. Deep fried and preprocessed junk food, on the other hand, typically has a low moisture content (to accompany its low general nutrition content) and shouldn’t require that you eat with a meal.
So, chew your food throuroughly, eat slowly, and have a beverage or not with your meal as it suits you. I’ll have a Murphy’s Stout with my smoked salmon sandwich, than you.
Stranger
You should drink eight 8 oz cups of water a day no question. However, be careful because drinking too much water can lead to a type of psychosis and even death. Most adults are actually chronically dehydrated and don’t even know it. Water helps rid the body of impurities. However, water in such disparate places as Egypt and Mexico can make you very sick avoid it like the plague. Medication should always be taken with water. Not enough water can cause a hard stool. Drowning is one of the leading causes of death among young people.
Sure, but it’s well known that drinking water too much will kill you at age 79 every single time. Sorry, ol’ fella. It’s been great.
60 years later, I can still hear my mother’s voice, “Don’t wash your food down, chew it!” 
Very funny. I am ROTFLMAO.
I hope this is a joke that you forgot to put a smiley on.
Just to clarify, that post is entirely inaccurate.
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You should drink as much water as you need to quench your thirst. That might be as little as half a glass a day. There is no reason to drink 8 glasses a day unless you feel thirsty. Even then unless you are very physically active or temperatures are very high consumption of that amount of water should be a sign to see your doctor. . The eight glasse sidea is an urban myth.
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Psychosis and death caused by drinking excess water causing is about as likely as getting struck by lightning. It can only occur if you are not eating, you are consuming vast amounts of diuretics such as alcohol or blood pressure medication or you stupid enough to consciously ignore your bodies water satiety reflex to force yourself to drink when your body is actively rejecting it. All of this is yet another reason to drink only when you feel thirsty.
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Most adults are not unknowingly chronically dehydrated. This is another urban myth, pure and simple. If adults were dehydrated they would know it. The body has a very good mechanism to tell us we are dehydrated, it is called thirst. It is impossible for a helathy human to be dehydrated and be unaware of it.
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Most water in the USA, France or Japan can also make you very sick if you aren’t acclimated ot the microbiota it contains. There is nothing special about water in Mexico and Egypt.
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Insufficient water can contribute to constipation. This is the only truly accurate statement in this post. However it should be noted that this is alrgely a function of diet. Sufficient soluble fibre in the diet aids water retention on the colon and tends to eliminate the problem unless you are geneuinely dehydrated and thirsty.
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Drowning is not a leading cause of death amongst young people. Seventy-three percent of the 10.6 million child deaths worldwide each year are the result of six causes: pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria, neonatal sepsis, pre-term delivery, and asphyxia at birth. I doubt if drowning even makes it into the list of top 10, 000 causes of death amongst young people.
For people who’ve had lap-band weightloss surgery it’s generally advised not to drink any fluids with or immediately after a meal, because the fluids may wash food down past the band and out of the new stomach pouch, which reduces the feeling of satiety and leads to over-eating. Which then defeats the purpose of having the band in the first place.
But that’s a pretty specific case where you’re not supposed to drink with a meal, and that’s any fluids not just water.
I don’t know Blake, I just figured as long as we were going over conflicting water advice, I could just throw in some tidbits I have heard over the years.
I was just assuming that he was ironically repeating all the inanely incorrect urban legands regarding water found in popular consciousness.
Stranger
You don’t live in a dry climate, obviously. While it may be a ‘myth’, I know I feel better if I have at least a litre of water over and above the rest of my beverages per day. And my lips chap long before I feel thirsty. I think people get used to depriving themselves of water and may not actually pay enough attention to their water needs.
Oh I dunno. People wouldn’t drop from heat exhaustion if they were that aware. I know I ended up at the point of dizziness a few times in a hot climate because it was easy to ignore the feeling of thirst.
All in all, I doubt it hurts anyone to add more water to their daily intake of fluids. If nothing else, it helps some people feel full before they stuff themselves with too much food.
My mother always use to ban water with meals because, “It would runi your apetite”. If only…
As a result I rarely, if ever, drink water with meals, since I never got into the habit. Except in the summer, I rarely drink water at all, except for a glass to take my morning pills. Since I am rarely thirsty (except in the summer), I can’t be missing water that much. I am aware of the claim that you are badly dehydrated when you feel thirst, but I don’t believe it. Evolution just doesn’t work that way. Am I badly undernourished when I am hungry?
To get back to the OP, I find it highly unlikely that that water with meals has any significant effect. Maybe the post that mentioned hard stools had a point, but other than that.
I’ve lived and worked in some of the hottest and driest places on the planet. At the moment I’m based in a locale with an average annual precipitation of ~900mm and an evaporative demand of aboput 1,200. Not exactly a green and pleasant land.
The amount that you need varies with your activity levels and the temperature. I have drunk over 15 litres of water in a 24 hour period without urinating more than usual. The point is not that you never need 8 glasses of water a day. The point is that you don’t always need 8 glasses a day. Saying that you should drink 8 glasses is as inaccurate. Indeed under most circumstances if you drink 8 glasses a day you will spend a large part of the day urinating.
Chapped lips are caused primarily by dry air, nothing to do with hydration levels. Dehydration can cause chapped lips when it becomes so severe that you can no longer keep the mucus membranes moist. But if you are that severely dehydrated and don’t feel thirst then you have a seroius physiological problem and should consult a doctor.
As the Snopes link I provided shows, this is not the opinion of medical professionals. It is no easier to ognore the need for water than to ignore the need for food.
Heat exhasution is not dehydration. It is overheating. It can be exacerbated by dehydration just as it can be exacerbated by not eating, but they are not the same processes. If dehydration is a factor then people become aware they are thirsty before heat exhaustion sets in.
Precisely. You were well aware that you were thirsty, you chose to ignore it. Nobody is saying that you can’t learn to ignore thirst, just as you can learn to ignore hunger, or pain. The point is that you are thirsty and are well aware of it.
Prolly not, just as it doesn’t hurt to wear a crystal pendant to channel your healing aura, and it doesn’t hurt to sacrifice a chicken to make the sun return in spring.
Exactly.
Quite correct. You get thirsty when begin to dehydrate, not when you are badly dehydrated. The idea that a savanna animal tht might have to travel several hours to find water would only start feeling thirst when it was badly dehydrated makes no sense on any level.