Water during meals

Jeff,

What are your thoughts on drinking water during meals? i.e. is it best to avoid water for a period of time before and/or after eating.  I have heard digestion being improved by keeping solids and liquids seperate.

Personally, I could never take this kind of idea seriously. What's the point of such an artificial separation?

Oh man.....

James, I think this is one of the mis-information topics out there in nutrition. The promoting of eating and drinking separately is only applicable to the dumbest people on the planet. I am a bit of a nutritional historian(self proclaimed). As a matter of fact Coach and I were just talking about my blog article on collagen and how the supplement industry recently stated pushing it and as a result "natural eaters" are promoting their own brand of collagen - bone broth. This is all over the past year and more so the last 3 months. The water thing according to my very unscientific research on this one came from the dumbest of the dumb people literally eating a meal and drinking a gallon of water so some Coach out there had to account for these goof balls by limited their water intake. 

I personally always drink a glass ice water with my meals. I think as long as you are reasonable there is no issues. What is an exact number that is reasonable? I would say 12-18oz. 

Fair enough,

I thought I would bring it up after seeing this article yesterday.  

 http://www.strengthsensei.com/john-meadows-two-things-i-know-for-sure-about-nutrition/

I have friends in Turkey, and the first time I went to visit them in their country I was quite surprised to notice that, at every meal, glasses and drinks in general were always absent. Even for breakfast! It has been later explained to me that in Turkish culture is not customary to drink during a meal, at all - and it was doubly surprising for me since their dishes tend to be quite dry and thick and dense, especially some types of bread. Rather, they drink big quantities of tea all along during the day.

As I have quite the opposite habit - I feel somewhat "wrong" if I don't have water at hand during my meals - I pointed this difference to all my hosts. The response in general has been a very nonchalant "I never thought about it, I guess you're right but we just don't drink during meals", mostly immediately followed by "Well water dilutes gastric acids anyway so our way is better.". This last comment specifically was interesting as it even came from people who don't know each other - I had the distinct impression that it was an a posteriori rationalization of a cultural habit, rather than a real motivation for it.

I would like to emphasize that I have done no research on the subject, and I am only telling this as a tale of cultural differences, which are always very interesting for me. This distinct lack of water is only apparent during meals, as otherwise everybody always had a bottle or two of water with them. They just don't drink while eating.

The world is a strange place.

In other news, I think I know what I want to read about in the next few days...

Fabio, 

Its definitely a personal preference. I like to drink water at meals but if I was in Turkey with friends...well as they say "when in Rome". Diluting gastric juices is possible but again only with an insane amount of water. I mean what if you eat a salad which is 70% water? Is that going to dilute your mojo? Any who, all that really matters is that you meet the water minimum. If you chose not to drink with meals then no prob. 

In Turkey they often drink ayran (diluted yoghurt+salt) with meals, you can ask for it in every eatery and you would have to be very unlucky to not get it. Tastes good and they believe it is good for you (in general, hard to disagree with this).

That could be interesting idea for a task, drink 1l ayran/yoghurt a day ;).