Tech Writer

Our new tech writer is a classic food hypochondriac/health nut. I was just listening to her going on to someone else about water. She bought a filtering water jug for her desk [since all water is full of poison, I guess, although where we happen to be is well documented to have some of the best tap water in the world. I wonder if she knows what the filter filters and what it doesn't? No doubt not]. She goes on about how she has to have something because she's so dehydrated even though she "drinks like a gallon of water a day." [A gallon!?] Then she says maybe she's not getting enough sodium or electrolytes... [Ya think?? And, uh, sodium is an electrolyte by the way]. But she doesn't eat salt because salt is bad for you, she says "I should look up what kind of sodium I should be getting." [uh, sodium is an element, there's only one kind in the whole universe] "Or," she says, "I'm not getting electrolytes and I should drink one Vitamin Water each day." [One. And better that even odds she doesn't know Vitamin Water is a Coke-Cola product].

News flash, if you drink that much water, your body is stressing to retain not only electrolytes, such as salt (next to water perhaps the single most important compound to all life as we know it, here on planet Earth), but also all water soluble vitamins as well. If you're sitting around in an office, and not sweating out the water, and replenishing what the body is washing away, you'll probably feel like crap.

I think we're hard wired to worry about food and water. But in modern, middle class America, food and water are plentiful. So some people just make up worries. And end up worse off for it. The idea of drinking eight glasses a day is a myth.

No, it's not "unhealthy". And these people might say things like "it can't do any harm." But there's two problems, one is sumed up nicely in the words of Lisa Simpson:

Lisa: By your logic I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.
Homer: Oh, how does it work?
Lisa: It doesn't work.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: It's just a stupid rock.
Homer: Uh-huh.
Lisa: But I don't see any tigers around, do you?
[Homer thinks of this, then pulls out some money]
Homer: Lisa, I want to buy your rock.

And the other problem is that a person is not doing themselves any good by sitting around all day worrying about their food. The whole "food as medicine" thing is an unhealthy relationship with life.