Dehydration and soft drinks

For any one at all interested in their health and quality of life I have been noticing an interesting phenomena.

I'm not a soft drink drinker - juice, cordial, coke, pepsi, solo, sprite - whatever, I generally don't drink it (unless mixed with something else on the odd occasion).

However....over the past few weeks I have been drinking far less water than I usually do (I normally drink about three litres of water a day). While I'm not finding myself dehydrated or 'thirsty', I have been getting urges, yearnings, cravings, desires, or whatever you might feel, for a sweet and/or fizzy drink.

My conclusion from this inadvertent experiment is that when we are dehydrated (note: you don't know if you are dehydrated - if you feel thirsty then you are well beyond the early stages of dehydration) your body tells you it needs water + electrolytes (sugar and salt) - hence the craving for a sweet bubbly drink.

The obesity pandemic driven largely by our addiction to sugary drinks (especially 'healthy' fruit juice - bah!) could be slowed by a greater effort on drinking more water. More water, less soft drink, less diabetes, less drain on society - and people think Centrelink gives away too much money. I say we tighten the criteria for helping people with late onset diabetes and other lifestyle related illnesses - if you can't bothered to keep yourself healthy (at no expense to yourself - in fact saving you money on alcohol, cigarettes, soft drink, junk food, expensive leisure activities, big TV's etc) then don't come crawling to the government asking for subsidised insulin shots or any other support.

Hmm, and I want to be a public health policy maker?

It can't hurt to drink more water, and ignore the naysayers who claim drinking too much strips vitamins and minerals from your body - rubbish. Eat a healthy diet full of vegetables, legumes and lean protein and you'll have all the vitamins and minerals you need.

The more I think about it, the more I would like to be able to create a 'Human Scorecard'. A little template that takes into account your lifestyle, income, education, career, etc etc and tell you exactly what your impact on the world is - economically (including environmentally). My guess is that most people would have a negative impact on the world - especially those of us in OECD countries (the new word I will use for 'the West').