Increasing Water Intake Helps Control Eating Habits, Recent Study Suggests

Drinking water can be a difficult task for most on a daily basis despite it being readily available in the United States. Many of those people know they should consume more water to keep the body hydrated, but they may not have known that drinking more water helps us control our eating habits. A recent study on increasing water intake and how it relates to better control what and how much they eat gives us another reason to drink more water daily. According to a study published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, researchers analyzed data from four waves of the National Health and Examination Study between 2005 and 2012 on 18,311 adults over age 18. These participants were asked what they consumed during two days, separated by three to 10 days, with researchers calculating how much plain water they drank as a percentage of daily dietary water intake from food and beverages combined. In totality, participants drank 4.2 cups of water per day which represented 30 percent of total daily dietary water intake. Their average intake of calories was 2,157 including 125 calories from sugar-sweetened beverages and 432 calories from junk food. The researchers found a one percent increase in proportion of daily water intake was connected with an 8.58-calorie decrease, showing reductions in fewer sugar-sweetened beverages, junk food, total fat, saturated fat, sugar sodium and cholesterol. "The impact of plain water intake on diet was similar across race/ethnicity, education and income levels and body weight status," Dr. Ruopeng, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, said in a press release. "This finding indicates that it might be sufficient to design and deliver universal nutrition interventions and education campaigns that promote plain water consumption in replacement of beverages with calories in diverse population subgroups without profound concerns about message and strategy customization."