by Zoë Pollock
Jamie Hale reports that drinking eight 8 oz glasses of water a day may not be necessary. The roots of the myth?
[Physician Heinz] Valtin thinks that the notion may have started in 1945 when the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately “1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food,” which would amount to roughly 2 to 2.5 quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces).
In its next sentence the board stated, “[M]ost of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” But that last sentence seems to have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water a person should drink each day.
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