According to archaeologists, the humankind started walking on the face of the planet approximately 6 million years ago. From the first of our ancestor, to the person who is reading this, there has been a need for liquids. Whether it been 300,000 years ago, the need of water and milk, to now it being coffee and sodas. The preferences and needs of the people have changed over time and now the consequences can be seen worldwide.

What you should drink and the reasoning behind it: there are multiple different and all the same time, equal answers to this question.  It varies from person to person, from location to occasion and so much more. In the following chapters we will dive deeper into why people consume different type of liquids and what are the benefits and ramifications of doing so.

• Milk: Society has always promoted milk as something people should and need to drink to grow healthy and have strong bones. This image has been globally advertised throughout the news. Because of that, it has become a norm. Milk has been served from the very beginning in schools and from there on the cycle continues until people are adults.

• Coffee: It is the leading worldwide beverage after water and its trade market revenue exceeds more than 10 billion US dollars. People use coffee for its effect on our nervous system, which is caused by one prominent ingredient, caffeine. It is commonly thought that drinking caffeine has only benefits, even health benefits. To a certain degree, those claims are true. On another hand, studies have shown inverse results where the consumption of caffeine has had direct correlations with cardiovascular complications, various cancer types, and even Alzheimer’s disease. The presumption of coffee being healthy most likely comes from it having some micronutrients in it. Some of the observed health effect carrying micronutrients are: magnesium, potassium, niacin and vitamin E.

Based on the database of USDA, 240ml of brewed coffee contains 7mg of magnesium, and one 30ml expresso cup contains 24mg. After doing the calculation based on the recommended dietary allowance, one cup of coffee would amount to 1-5% of the needed amount of magnesium in adult men. With this information at knowledge, it might be a stretch to argue the health effects based on the micronutrient side of coffee.

*Reminder: consumption of caffeine up to 400 mg/day is safe. (1-4 cups)

• Water: is a major natural concern what comes to its depletion, pollution, and excessive consumption. It’s estimated that people consume 450 billion gallons of water in a day, just in the United States. Now more than ever, the importance of drinking water is headlined with bold letters. Our body’s are on average 40-65% made of water, depending of age, height, gender etc. This percentage decreases when the human body goes into dehydration state. Progressive dehydration state can eventually lead to heatstroke, which is caused by the body not being able to cool down, for the lack of water storages in the system.

References:

Andreas, Nicholas J, Beate Kampmann, and Kirsty Mehring Le-Doare. “Human Breast Milk: A Review on Its Composition and Bioactivity.” Early human development 91.11 (2015): 629–635. Web.

Thorning, T. K., Raben, A., Tholstrup, T., Soedamah-Muthu, S. S., Givens, I., & Astrup, A. (2016, November 22). Milk and dairy products: Good or bad for human health? an assessment of the totality of scientific evidence. Food & nutrition research. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5122229/

authors, A., & Jane V. Higdon & Balz Frei. (n.d.). Coffee and health: A review of recent human research. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408390500400009?scroll=top&needAccess=true

Water Quality: Food Processing and health. Taylor & Francis. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2022, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408397509527176