8 ms·

Both energy drinks and milk absorb better than water. Doesn't seem odd that coconut water is in the and category.

logfromblammo 9y ago
Doesn't matter. Even if I only absorbed 90% of the water I drank, I could just drink 1.111 L of water to get 1 L of "hydration", and it would still be cheaper than drinking 1 L of Brawndo, the Thirst Annihilator. On a money cost basis, in any place on Earth that has municipal drinking water on tap, drinking that water is the cheapest way to hydrate your body. Whether or not "best" includes the money cost is a matter of opinion, but most people at least include it as a factor. The same goes for a lot of "superfoods". On a cost basis, whatever you get from 100g of the "superfood" can probably be obtained by eating 200g of something else, sold at a much lower price. Or it's only of interest to vegans, because the "something else" is an animal product. People on western diets just aren't limited by nutrition content. If you eat your normal calorie quota--even a reduced quota from a weight-loss diet--you can always get adequate nutrition from just the normal, healthy, non-"super" foods. There's nothing stopping you from eating a bucketful of broccoli with a bit of salmon, and skipping the wheatgrass-kale-chia-pomegranate super-smoothies forever.
- nrenegar 9y ago
  But Brawndo's got electrolytes.
jerf 9y ago
I'd like to see some evidence of that. No sarcasm, I'd be interested if someone could provide some. But the article kindly provided evidence that coconut water does not hydrate better, and I found it particularly interesting that it hydrated exactly as well, which to me strongly suggests that the primary driver in how hydrating something is, unsurprisingly, the water in it. I find the science part of my mind is not all that discomfited by taking coconut water as a first-order approximation of energy drinks in general. (It of course is yelling "test it! test it!", but honestly, that's just background noise to this query. It's always yammering on about that with no thought as to how expensive the testing is. That's its job, of course.)
- maccard 9y ago
  Pseudo source - https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/27/sports-drinks https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandst... Money quote : “study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that consuming an isotonic sports drink increased treadmill running time to exhaustion by 27% in recreational runners.” It doesn’t say what journal though. The key also seems to be isotonic drinks according to that article.
  - fjsolwmv 9y ago
    That's not hydration

Doesn't matter. Even if I only absorbed 90% of the water I drank, I could just drink 1.111 L of water to get 1 L of "hydration", and it would still be cheaper than drinking 1 L of Brawndo, the Thirst Annihilator. On a money cost basis, in any place on Earth that has municipal drinking water on tap, drinking that water is the cheapest way to hydrate your body. Whether or not "best" includes the money cost is a matter of opinion, but most people at least include it as a factor. The same goes for a lot of "superfoods". On a cost basis, whatever you get from 100g of the "superfood" can probably be obtained by eating 200g of something else, sold at a much lower price. Or it's only of interest to vegans, because the "something else" is an animal product. People on western diets just aren't limited by nutrition content. If you eat your normal calorie quota--even a reduced quota from a weight-loss diet--you can always get adequate nutrition from just the normal, healthy, non-"super" foods. There's nothing stopping you from eating a bucketful of broccoli with a bit of salmon, and skipping the wheatgrass-kale-chia-pomegranate super-smoothies forever.

nrenegar 9y ago
But Brawndo's got electrolytes.

jerf 9y ago

I'd like to see some evidence of that. No sarcasm, I'd be interested if someone could provide some. But the article kindly provided evidence that coconut water does not hydrate better, and I found it particularly interesting that it hydrated exactly as well, which to me strongly suggests that the primary driver in how hydrating something is, unsurprisingly, the water in it. I find the science part of my mind is not all that discomfited by taking coconut water as a first-order approximation of energy drinks in general. (It of course is yelling "test it! test it!", but honestly, that's just background noise to this query. It's always yammering on about that with no thought as to how expensive the testing is. That's its job, of course.)

maccard 9y ago
Pseudo source - https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/jul/27/sports-drinks https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandst... Money quote : “study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that consuming an isotonic sports drink increased treadmill running time to exhaustion by 27% in recreational runners.” It doesn’t say what journal though. The key also seems to be isotonic drinks according to that article.
- fjsolwmv 9y ago
  That's not hydration