Water is one of the most important nutrients for any living organism. Water do not contain any calorie, it do not have amino acids to build our body. But still water is one of the most important nutrients. Animal body contains more than 70% water. So all animal (including human) needs sufficient water for proper functioning of their body.

How much water intake is required per day for an animal is not fixed. The intake of water depends on body size, level of activity, temperature, humidity, and other factors. The more water loss from the body results more requirement of water intake. Water is excreted from the body in different forms. Common route of water loss from the body are urine, feces, sweating, by exhalation of water vapor in the breath etc.

Normally for a healthy person, it needs 2-4 litres of water intake daily. In 1945, Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended an ordinary standard for diverse a person, that is 1 milliliter for each calorie of food.

The recommendation of United States National Research Council is 2.7 liters of water for women and 3.7 liters for men in general. Institute of Medicine recommended 2.2 litres water for women and 3.0 litres water for men. For the pregnant women, the recommended water intake is 2.4 liters and for the breastfeeding women the recommended amount is 3 liters/day. This entire requirement calculated including dietary intakes of water. Normally about 20-25 percent of water intake comes from food and rest of the 75-80 percent comes from directly drinking of water and other liquid food like beverages, milk etc.

 

 

 

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I recently heard a report on the news that everyone requires a different intake and that some people only need one glass of water a day and others need around five. The standard once said that you have to drink around eight glasses of water a day per day to be healthy but this seems to not be true. No one really ever drinks that much water unless they have made a habit out of it. There is a source of nutrients and water in so many other things you consume that it sometimes is not necessary to drink all that much. I pretty much drink soda for the day and very little water but I still live a relatively healthy life.

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When we write your water requirement, it does not mean that you need to drink it as the pure form of water. You can take it from different sources. Almost every food (except oil, fat etc.) contains a large amount of water. The amount of water (%) can easily determine by a simple test called proximate analysis. In this analysis you can calculate the percentage of water present in that food, it called moisture percentage.

Let you drink 250 ml milk daily. Milk contains around 87% water. So, you take 250 X 0.87 = 217.5 ml water from that amount of milk. Let you also take 250 ml of other soft drinks containing more then 97% moisture. So get 250 X 0.97 = 242.5 ml water from those soft drinks. Let you also take 300 g fruits daily containing more then 70% moisture. So you also get 300 X 0.70 = 210 ml water from those foods.

So you take 250 ml milk + 250 ml soft drinks + 300 g fresh fruits and you get 217.5 ml + 242.5 ml + 210 ml = 670 ml water without drinking water directly. If we consider 175 ml water as a glass of water, so 670 ml is about 4 glass of water.

In this way we take water from our different foods and we fulfill our water requirement without drinking water directly. So do not be confused when you see your water requirement is 10 glass of water per day or something like this and you take only 1 or 2 glass water daily and you also do not face any problem. As you get remaining amount of water from your other foods so drinking 1 or 2 glass of water can fulfill your demand.

 

 

 

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water - nutrient?

I doubt. I do not thing water has any essential nutrients... It does not have any energy giving particles in it.
The only important thing that water does, is to facilitate all the metabolic activities that is taking place inside the body. If not for water every essential activity in the body will come to a standstill and will lead to death. so at any point of time, there should be a minimum amount of water that has to be present in the body...

Keep in mind, blood is also half water.. so body is constituted with water in various forms... So water is indeed an essential part but that does not mean, it gives energy...

oxygen from water? Possible.

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No doubt about it, water is a nutrient. Incase of plant nutrition, animal nutrition (both ruminant nutrition and non-ruminant nutrition) everywhere water is a nutrient. Why do you think water should contain any essential nutrients inside it. Water itself a nutrient.

Yes, water has no energy giving particle, but what is the relation between energy giving particles and nutrients? Nutrients do not need to have any energy giving particles. Carbohydrate, protein and fat gives energy but it do not means that nutrients must give energy. Vitamin, minerals, water is not for energy supply. A nutrient is a substance used in an organism's metabolism which must be taken in from the environment.



Is it meaning anything? I can not understand. Why water needs to give energy? Can any one help me to understand this?

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