Is Drinking Liquids With Meals Really Bad For You?

Drinking liquids, like water, along with your meals is as common and normal like day and night. After all, you always need something to help push the food down.

So why are some people claiming that it’s bad for your digestion? And further still, why are others saying that it can cause toxins to accumulate in your body?

The science behind it may explain why.

Drinking with meals

Our bodies are made up of approximately 70 percent water, and so it should come as no surprise that drinking lots of fluids everyday offers a wide range of benefits. For others however, that fluid intake (especially if it’s not water) should stop whenever we eat, as it can affect our digestion.

The most common claim behind this is that acidic or alcoholic drinks can help dry up saliva, which is a component our body needs to break down food.

And while alcohol does decreases saliva flow by about 10-15 percent. On the other hand, acidic drinks seem to do the opposite. There is however, no scientific evidence that proves drinking either of these affects our body’s ability to absorb nutrients.

Another claim is that drinking water with meals dilutes our digestive enzymes and stomach acids so much that our body finds it difficult to digest what it ate. Thankfully, our digestive system has the ability to adapt to any meal’s consistency, proving this claim to be false.

Lastly, one of the most popular arguments is that pairing meals with liquids pushes solid food out of your stomach at a faster rate. Because of this, meals can’t properly interact with the enzymes in our stomach, leading to poorer digestion. However, this claim is not supported by any scientific research.

In fact, because liquids help break up solid food, they may even help our bodies digest meals better. Water is even needed by enzymes to perform properly, while research proves that it helps speed up our metabolism.

At the end of the day, drinking liquids along with our meals pose little to no health risks. Just remember that when it comes to choice of beverage, water remains as your healthiest option.