Of Myths And Millennials

Are you drinking eight glasses of water, eating salad and sleeping eight hours a day? Good for you, but unfortunately, your actions might not have a firm scientific basis.

AnnabelBanner

AsianScientist (Aug. 28, 2015) – As a 27-year-old living in 2015, there are many things to be worried about: terrorism, climate change, and what we should eat for dinner. Choices plague us incessantly. Should you go gluten-free? Will going vegetarian reduce carbon footprint? Should you even drink 8 glasses of water a day?

Lately, I have begun evaluating more my smaller life choices that involve everyday living and eating. I’m not a vegan, I don’t have celiac disease, and I’m not a “tree-hugger,” but I do care about the world that we are going to leave behind for future generations to come. I think it’s our duty as a well-informed society to make responsible choices.

After all, we are children of the Yelp generation, where no product or establishment will even be considered to be worthy of our time unless the patron has read all 233 reviews. As a Yelp generation, we also tend to follow popular opinion unceremoniously. Five star ratings on a pizza place means nothing if all the reviewers have never ventured to any other pizza place. Although we may read a lot, it’s ultimately up to us to make the best of that information.


Myth #1: Drink eight glasses of water a day.

To illustrate, yesterday, I read a New York Times column titled “No, You Do Not Have to Drink Eight Glasses of Water a Day”. The article basically rebuts the myth that you must drink eight glasses of water a day, which reportedly came from the 1945 Food and Nutrition Board recommendation that a person needs 2.5 liters of water a day. However, the text that follows that recommendation—“Most of this quantity is contained in prepared food”—has been conveniently ignored, as Dr. Carroll, author of the column, highlights.

A number of people in my friends feed on Facebook had shared this article, mostly underscoring the part that read, “Water is present in fruits and vegetables. It’s in juice, it’s in beer, it’s even in tea and coffee. Before anyone writes me to tell me that coffee is going to dehydrate you, research shows that’s not true either.”

Personally, I don’t see what’s wrong with drinking eight glasses of water a day. So many people consume sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) like Coke, frappucinos and mocha lattes without a second thought. Further, many children are not drinking enough water, especially in school, something that Dr. Carroll disputes as well. In any case, the water recommendation, from what I have read, is a strategy employed to counter consumption of SSBs.


Myth #2: Salads are good for you.

Are salads good for you? Not always. As I read the eight-glasses-of-water column, I was then reminded of another column that underscored the incredibly high water content of vegetables and the lack of nutrition in most salads, especially in lettuce.

Ms. Haspel, the author of the column, argues that that lettuce is not only a vegetable that is not wholesome and nutritious, but also environmentally unfriendly. She writes: “[Lettuce] occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.” According to a sustainability group Wrap in the UK, in 2012, lettuce accounted for £270m of avoidable food waste.

Beyond that, restaurant salads also fool the consumer into thinking they’re eating healthily. This is often not true given that many salads are covered in some form of unnecessary dressing.

While I don’t think I would go as far as calling avid salad eaters “fools”, think about that the next time you’re at the salad bar.


Myth #3: Sleep eight hours a day

Is eight the magic number? It’s long been purported that humans need eight hours of sleep to function adequately. There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the magic number eight. From personal experience, I am perfectly aware that less than five hours of sleep is quite detrimental to my normal function the next day.

More scientifically, a 2002 study showed that among 1.1 million men and women surveyed, the optimal number of hours of sleep a person should get is seven hours. People who reported sleeping eight hours or more experienced increased mortality hazard. Yet, the same author also showed in a separate study that sleeping less than five hours and more than 6.5 hours could increase mortality risk.

Alas, nothing ever seems right. No two studies have ever shown the exact same result because it’s difficult to do so on a population scale. It’s really up to us how we interpret the results and make the best choices for ourselves and for everyone else.

Having said that, I think it’d be great if someone would come up with a Yelp for scientific papers.


This article is from a monthly column called Our Small World. Click here to see the other articles in this series.

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Source: Asian Scientist Magazine; Photo: with wind/Flickr/CC.
Disclaimer: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of AsianScientist or its staff.

Annabel is currently a 2nd year Masters in Public Health student at Yale University. She received her MEng in biomedical engineering from Imperial College London in 2010. She spent the summer of 2014 researching substance abuse in Tanzania. She has a keen interest in food, yoga and metal music.

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