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Rational thought goes out the window when people hear a good story. When someone a long time ago (Victorian era? somebody correct me) started circulating a sto

Rational thought goes out the window when people hear a good story. When someone a long time ago (Victorian era? somebody correct me) started circulating a story people from ancient times up until the 19th century drank a lot of wine and beer because they didn't know how to find clean water, an amazing number of people repeated it as if it were a fact. Despite the fact that there was no evidence to support it (other than the people repeating the story), there was evidence against it (many ancient writers describe the use of clean water and how/where to find it), and it made no sense (if they couldn't find clean water, why didn't they all just die when they didn't have wine and beer? what about the billions of uneducated rural people today that get along fine without treated water and don't drink wine or beer?). When we hear a good story, we want to believe it, so we don't think too hard about it.

jncfhnb 2y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_vitae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_vitae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer It is very much a well documented thing. You’re incorrectly reasoning that since it wasn’t the only strategy ubiquitous everywhere and all the time that it just not have been real
- dannyobrien 2y ago
  could you point to the specific part of those Wikipedia entries that says that very large quantities of these drinks were taken because of the difficulty of finding clean water? Or were you making another point here?
  - christianqchung 2y ago
    It's not in there, I just read the articles. Maybe the point is about how low alcohol beer was commonly drunken, though I'm not sure how that relevant either.
    - ahoka 2y ago
      Of course it’s not there as those 2-3% percent beers would kill nothing.
      - jodleif 2y ago
        It’s because they boiled the water in order to brew the beer
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        I don’t think that’s likely to be true. Many of these beverages were made strong but then diluted with regular water that had not been boiled.
  - penteract 2y ago
    Germ theory wasn't widespread throughout the time period we're talking about, so they wouldn't have been able to give the reasoning that we would about why clean water is important or how alcohol acts as a disinfectant. However, the Small beer Wikipedia page says that very large quantities of these drinks were consumed > It was common for workers who engaged in laborious tasks to drink more than ten imperial pints (5.7 litres) of small beer a day to quench their thirst And that it was believed to be good for people > "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer" The fact that aqua vitae means "water of life" is also evidence for this.
    - ahoka 2y ago
      You need at least 40% alcohol to kill _some_ pathogens.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        Failing to kill 100% of pathogens does not mean it had no benefits
      - idunnoman1222 2y ago
        To make beer, you boil the wort, after fermentation the finished beer keeps for sometime and you can taste when it’s gone off. Also hops is a preservative.
        ywvcbk 2y ago
        People knew that boiling water “improved” the quality of water for thousands of years. Regardless there is plenty of evidence that medieval people drank plenty pf water. Why do some people feel so strongly about this myth?
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        The claim isn’t that they didn’t drink lots of water. They did. And they frequently got sick
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    > The term [Aqua Vitae (“water of life”)] was used by the 14th-century alchemist John of Rupescissa, who believed the then newly discovered substance of ethanol to be an imperishable and life-giving "fifth essence" or quintessence, and who extensively studied its medical properties.[3] You’re not going to find a well defined germ theory breakdown of the potability of water because it did not exist. It’s not like they could identify clean water vs dirty water. It’s not like drinking dirty water meant you were going to die either. Generally speaking, people understood that drinking more alcoholic drinks was likely to have health benefits among other things, hence the term “water of life”. Drinking alcohol was seen as a move that would improve your health, including as literal medicine. It was frequently drank because it was good for you. Not strictly because they knew they couldn’t drink the water. They did drink a lot of dirty water too.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ywvcbk 2y ago
      Do you think distilled alcohol can be used as an alternative hydration source instead of water? Might I ask have you ever tried it? > Drinking alcohol was seen as a move that would improve your health, including as literal medicine Even if that’s true it’s not at all related with alcohol being a replacement for water. It’s like if someone if in 400+ years decided that most people in the 2000s only ate supplements instead of actual food due to similar reasons.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        If you’re referring to the fact that alcohol is a diuretic, then just say that. that’s basically a myth in the popular understanding. A drink has to be fairly strong to dehydrate you. A beer will probably hydrate you. But it might vary by person for stronger beers. The drinks we are discussing here are extremely weak and definitely going to hydrate you. > Even if that’s true it’s not at all related with alcohol being a replacement for water. It’s like if someone if in 400+ years decided that most people in the 2000s only ate supplements instead of actual food due to similar reasons. Then maybe read my whole post where I explicitly said they drank a lot of dirty water
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Spooky23 2y ago
In England they flipped to tea because of cost. Workers often couldn’t find clean water in the field - just like today. Near beer also has some properties of sports drinks and hydrates better. The world is a complex place. Like today, availability and quality of potable water varies.
- orwin 2y ago
  They could, and water was free and did not need heat unlike table beer. In 1300 europe was 45Million strong, i guarantee you you had enough clean, fresh water for everybody as long as you did not live in a city. I'm pretty sure cities created pipe system around that time too. The issue with spirits and table beer was it needed heating, and that was costly. It probably was still one of the cheapest way to ingest grain, so from late autumn to early spring, people drank a lot of "beer porridge" for lack of a better term, but hydration was done with clean water. Real, filtered table beers didn't really exist until the first industrial revolution (coal did help make it cheaper).
  - derefr 2y ago
    > Real, filtered table beers Who said anything about "filtered"? We're talking about watered-down beer here (or rather, to put a fine point on it, beered-up water.) In other words, grog, but with [whatever spirit is commonly produced locally] instead of rum. > The issue with spirits and table beer was it needed heating, and that was costly. Let's walk through the lifecycle of a small beer here, because I think you're conflating a decentralized economic logistical workflow as if it was all the responsibility of one dude. A local brewer/distiller makes high-proof beer/spirits. Which does require heating, sure, but just once, when making the batch. Then pub/tavern-keepers buy those high-proof spirits, by the caskful. They can let them sit around forever until they use them up, despite the casks not being particularly sanitary, because these wholesale spirits' high alcohol content and low water content prevents spoilage indefinitely. So they're good investments, something they're willing to put money up front for. (And these large infusions of revenue — perhaps even on a predictable contractual basis, for something like a tavern — are how the brewer stays in business, despite the expense of burning wood/coal to brew.) Each day, any given tavern-keeper might fetch a barrel of fresh-ish creek/well/lake water. Might be infectious, might not. Even fresh creek water can have Giardia. When a tavern keeper wants to serve someone small beer, they take a mug of the creek water, measure out a jigger of the high-proof spirit, and stir it in. The alcohol content kills whatever might be in the water, and if it's something like beer, probably maybe makes it taste better, too. The creek water will spoil in a tavern-kitchen environment, but that's fine: it's just water. Treat it as grey water at the end of the night — use it for dishes or whatever. Maybe take some for boiling puddings in. Dump the rest on your garden. This is basically the same logic as fountain drinks. A central provider spends a bunch of ahead-of-time effort to make a bunch of concentrated syrup that's too high-sugar and low-water-content to ever spoil. Then restaurant owners buy this, and combine it just-in-time with water to produce drinks.
penteract 2y ago
> what about the billions of uneducated rural people today that get along fine without treated water and don't drink wine or beer? Less than 1 billion now without reliable nearby access to clean water[0], and "get along fine" is dubious - an estimated 1.4 million people died in 2019 from unsafe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (more than 500000 from drinking water specifically) [1]. [0] https://www.wateraid.org/uk/what-we-do/water https://www.wateraid.org/uk/what-we-do/water [1] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240075610 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240075610

jncfhnb 2y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_vitae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_vitae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer It is very much a well documented thing. You’re incorrectly reasoning that since it wasn’t the only strategy ubiquitous everywhere and all the time that it just not have been real

dannyobrien 2y ago
could you point to the specific part of those Wikipedia entries that says that very large quantities of these drinks were taken because of the difficulty of finding clean water? Or were you making another point here?
- christianqchung 2y ago
  It's not in there, I just read the articles. Maybe the point is about how low alcohol beer was commonly drunken, though I'm not sure how that relevant either.
  - ahoka 2y ago
    Of course it’s not there as those 2-3% percent beers would kill nothing.
    - jodleif 2y ago
      It’s because they boiled the water in order to brew the beer
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        I don’t think that’s likely to be true. Many of these beverages were made strong but then diluted with regular water that had not been boiled.
- penteract 2y ago
  Germ theory wasn't widespread throughout the time period we're talking about, so they wouldn't have been able to give the reasoning that we would about why clean water is important or how alcohol acts as a disinfectant. However, the Small beer Wikipedia page says that very large quantities of these drinks were consumed > It was common for workers who engaged in laborious tasks to drink more than ten imperial pints (5.7 litres) of small beer a day to quench their thirst And that it was believed to be good for people > "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer" The fact that aqua vitae means "water of life" is also evidence for this.
  - ahoka 2y ago
    You need at least 40% alcohol to kill _some_ pathogens.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      Failing to kill 100% of pathogens does not mean it had no benefits
    - idunnoman1222 2y ago
      To make beer, you boil the wort, after fermentation the finished beer keeps for sometime and you can taste when it’s gone off. Also hops is a preservative.
      - ywvcbk 2y ago
        People knew that boiling water “improved” the quality of water for thousands of years. Regardless there is plenty of evidence that medieval people drank plenty pf water. Why do some people feel so strongly about this myth?
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        The claim isn’t that they didn’t drink lots of water. They did. And they frequently got sick
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  > The term [Aqua Vitae (“water of life”)] was used by the 14th-century alchemist John of Rupescissa, who believed the then newly discovered substance of ethanol to be an imperishable and life-giving "fifth essence" or quintessence, and who extensively studied its medical properties.[3] You’re not going to find a well defined germ theory breakdown of the potability of water because it did not exist. It’s not like they could identify clean water vs dirty water. It’s not like drinking dirty water meant you were going to die either. Generally speaking, people understood that drinking more alcoholic drinks was likely to have health benefits among other things, hence the term “water of life”. Drinking alcohol was seen as a move that would improve your health, including as literal medicine. It was frequently drank because it was good for you. Not strictly because they knew they couldn’t drink the water. They did drink a lot of dirty water too.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ywvcbk 2y ago
    Do you think distilled alcohol can be used as an alternative hydration source instead of water? Might I ask have you ever tried it? > Drinking alcohol was seen as a move that would improve your health, including as literal medicine Even if that’s true it’s not at all related with alcohol being a replacement for water. It’s like if someone if in 400+ years decided that most people in the 2000s only ate supplements instead of actual food due to similar reasons.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      If you’re referring to the fact that alcohol is a diuretic, then just say that. that’s basically a myth in the popular understanding. A drink has to be fairly strong to dehydrate you. A beer will probably hydrate you. But it might vary by person for stronger beers. The drinks we are discussing here are extremely weak and definitely going to hydrate you. > Even if that’s true it’s not at all related with alcohol being a replacement for water. It’s like if someone if in 400+ years decided that most people in the 2000s only ate supplements instead of actual food due to similar reasons. Then maybe read my whole post where I explicitly said they drank a lot of dirty water
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

Spooky23 2y ago

In England they flipped to tea because of cost. Workers often couldn’t find clean water in the field - just like today. Near beer also has some properties of sports drinks and hydrates better. The world is a complex place. Like today, availability and quality of potable water varies.

orwin 2y ago
They could, and water was free and did not need heat unlike table beer. In 1300 europe was 45Million strong, i guarantee you you had enough clean, fresh water for everybody as long as you did not live in a city. I'm pretty sure cities created pipe system around that time too. The issue with spirits and table beer was it needed heating, and that was costly. It probably was still one of the cheapest way to ingest grain, so from late autumn to early spring, people drank a lot of "beer porridge" for lack of a better term, but hydration was done with clean water. Real, filtered table beers didn't really exist until the first industrial revolution (coal did help make it cheaper).
- derefr 2y ago
  > Real, filtered table beers Who said anything about "filtered"? We're talking about watered-down beer here (or rather, to put a fine point on it, beered-up water.) In other words, grog, but with [whatever spirit is commonly produced locally] instead of rum. > The issue with spirits and table beer was it needed heating, and that was costly. Let's walk through the lifecycle of a small beer here, because I think you're conflating a decentralized economic logistical workflow as if it was all the responsibility of one dude. A local brewer/distiller makes high-proof beer/spirits. Which does require heating, sure, but just once, when making the batch. Then pub/tavern-keepers buy those high-proof spirits, by the caskful. They can let them sit around forever until they use them up, despite the casks not being particularly sanitary, because these wholesale spirits' high alcohol content and low water content prevents spoilage indefinitely. So they're good investments, something they're willing to put money up front for. (And these large infusions of revenue — perhaps even on a predictable contractual basis, for something like a tavern — are how the brewer stays in business, despite the expense of burning wood/coal to brew.) Each day, any given tavern-keeper might fetch a barrel of fresh-ish creek/well/lake water. Might be infectious, might not. Even fresh creek water can have Giardia. When a tavern keeper wants to serve someone small beer, they take a mug of the creek water, measure out a jigger of the high-proof spirit, and stir it in. The alcohol content kills whatever might be in the water, and if it's something like beer, probably maybe makes it taste better, too. The creek water will spoil in a tavern-kitchen environment, but that's fine: it's just water. Treat it as grey water at the end of the night — use it for dishes or whatever. Maybe take some for boiling puddings in. Dump the rest on your garden. This is basically the same logic as fountain drinks. A central provider spends a bunch of ahead-of-time effort to make a bunch of concentrated syrup that's too high-sugar and low-water-content to ever spoil. Then restaurant owners buy this, and combine it just-in-time with water to produce drinks.

penteract 2y ago

> what about the billions of uneducated rural people today that get along fine without treated water and don't drink wine or beer? Less than 1 billion now without reliable nearby access to clean water[0], and "get along fine" is dubious - an estimated 1.4 million people died in 2019 from unsafe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene (more than 500000 from drinking water specifically) [1]. [0] https://www.wateraid.org/uk/what-we-do/water https://www.wateraid.org/uk/what-we-do/water [1] https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240075610 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240075610