Some people may have heard that you should not drink ice water with a meal. If they have heard this, many are unsure of the reasoning behind this information. Many other people have never even heard that drinking ice water, or other cold drinks, with their meal can be detrimental to their digestion. In this article, we will explain the reasons behind why your digestion could suffer from your intake of cold beverages. The Chinese were the first to know and understand that drinking ice water with a meal could harm your digestion. They have, for many years, chosen to instead drink warm or hot beverages, such as water and tea, with their meals. How Improper Digestion Can Harm You Not being able to properly digest your food can be harmful to*you in many different ways. Your body must turn the food you consume into energy in order for your organs to function properly and give you the energy you need to perform your daily tasks. Also, your body retrieves essential vitamins and minerals from the food you eat. If your body cannot work properly to retrieve these elements, it will suffer. Your immune system, which works to fight off colds and other illnesses, can also suffer from poor digestion because it does not have the energy it needs to function correctly. How Ice Water Harms Digestion Ice water can be harmful because it*damages your body's ability to properly digest food and drink. Drinking cold beverages with a meal can slow down your body's proper digestive actions. You can think of it as almost freezing your insides temporarily so that they cannot do what they need to do at that moment. So, instead, food goes by improperly digested, and your body's unable to retrieve the nutrients and energy from it that it needs. By decreasing the activity of your digestive system, cold beverages rob you of the nutrition of the food you ate. Also, when you drink cold beverages, your body has to use energy in order to warm up that liquid inside your body. This is also robbing your body of the energy it needs to properly process the food you have eaten. Instead of working to get all the nutrition of the food, your digestive system is instead working on regulating the temperature of the cold drink. What You Should Drink Instead Instead of ice water or other iced beverages, you should opt for room temperature drinks or even warmer liquids, such as hot water or hot tea. Do not drink beverages straight out of the refrigerator. If a beverage must stay chilled in order to keep, make sure your pour a glass and then wait until it has warmed to room temperature before drinking. When you are in a restaurant, be sure you tell your waiter to hold the ice. Drinking warmer liquids will aid your digestive system by increasing its activity. This will, in return, allow your body to absorb the proper amount of energy and nutrition from the foods you consumed. http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/ice-water-and-digestion.html#b
pretty common knowledge. that's why all the Japanese people are so skinny; they have hot tea after every meal. cold liquids solidify the foods in your stomach, making it harder for you to digest. that's why I drink all my bottled water at room temp.
Source? Study? Scientific evidence? Sounds like a bunch of BS to me. Like one guy's personal theory. Poorly written personal theory.
It's because they drink hot drinks? Not because of a diet that's generally heavier on fish and rice than its western counterparts of beef, pork and bread? I mean, think about this: Hot Food + Cold Water = Body Temperature Stomach Contents ...so if your stomach contents need to match your body temperature, isn't cooling off a hot meal with a cooler drink beneficial? I mean, I don't have any evidence to back this up, but you're reading it on the internet so it must be true.
For some reason it gives me stomach aches occasionally. Whereas when I have hot soup or beverage with food I feel nice and comfy. One of life's greatest mysteries.
Who knows...enzymes are known to be activated at warmer temps, and perhaps more of the pancreatic enzymes are activated in digestive content that is more warmer...
but enzymes can also denature if the temperature is too high, the chemical structure of enzymes would unfold, effectively making these proteins useless. if you graph enzymes in relation to temperature, it would be a bell curve
Im not sure people are drinking boiling water...warm or room temp water isnt boiling. And our body's optimum temp is about (38C or 98.7F). In the eastern cultures, perhaps people drinking warm tea/water may have to decreasing the risk of acquiring water borne illnesses seen in that part of the world. Medicine on this topic is quite indifferent, since most of the foods and fluids that are digested are quickly regulated once within the gut. On the flip side, considering the entire Southern and eastern Asian populations does this there could be some truth to this. IMO, the truth in this lies some where in the middle.
That is a load of BS. In primal times we would mostly drink cool water from streams. We would certainly not drink close to boiling liquid. The issue as to drink cold or hot beverages is about number 4,000 on the list of concerns.
Thanks for that. Ice water is best after exercising. I always drink water at room temperature all other times.
I think some of this is true, some enzymes better activated/cleaved or w/e at warmer temperatures than colder. Maybe not to the extent at this article states it to be but I do believe there is some sort of truth to it edit- is anybody here an actual chemist/biologist/biochemist or are they all just speaking out of their asses and posting crapshoots?
But...but...it's on the Internet, so it MUST be true! Yeah, until I see some solid scientific evidence that any of these claims are true, I call BS on the whole thing.
