How much water does an adult need each day? Adults need about two and a half liters.
One liter of that comes from the food we eat. The second liter comes from a cup of morning tea or coffee, a bowl of soup at lunch, a glass of tea at dinner, and a glass of soda or kvass spread throughout the day.
But that only accounts for two liters. Where does the extra half liter come from?
It’s produced inside the body itself, mainly when fats are “burned” for energy. So every person is, in effect, a source of “homemade” water.
Animals can survive for a while without food, but they die quickly without water. Losing about 15 percent of body water can cause death, while the body can tolerate a much larger loss of stored proteins and fats.
For mammals, water is more crucial than food. That’s why animals tend to live where water is available. Elephants, which love to bathe and struggle during droughts, can sense rain from more than a hundred miles away.
But here’s the astonishing part: gazelles and antelopes living in deserts can go their entire lives without drinking water…
It’s understandable that predatory birds manage without drinking because their prey contains a lot of moisture, which satisfies their hydration needs. But antelopes eat grass, which isn’t always juicy; the desert offers little to drink. So how do they survive without water?
Nature provides the answer. The water their bodies need is generated by metabolic processes and other physiological functions.
