Drinking Water Before Meals Can Staunch Your Appetite, and Lead to Weight Loss

In their latest study, researchers discovered that drinking water before eating your meals helps you lose weight. In a time where over thirty percent of adults in America are obese, this seems like it would be significant information, at the least. The leanest state in America is Colorado (Massachusetts coming in as the fourth leanest state), where fifty five percent of the residents are overweight, while nineteen percent are obese. The state with the biggest weight issue in America is currently Mississippi, in which seventy percent of the residents are overweight, and thirty four percent are obese. As issues of weight and obesity continue to grow in America, it would make sense that many people attempt to do crazy things to lose weight. While Americans and American physicians continue to worry about the escalating weight problems, diets become increasingly popular. Researchers have recently thought of a cheap, side-affect free, appetite controlling substance: water. Brenda Davy, a researcher from Virginia Tech, presented the idea to the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Studies showed that middle aged men and women who drank two cups of water before eating a meal at a lower amount of calories. For the study, researchers took forty eight men and women and put them on healthy diets, but prescribed their method of drinking water to only half the subjects. After twelve weeks, the group that drank two cups of water before their meals had lost more weight the group that hadn’t. Davy believes that this occurred because water is filling, and has zero calories.

This is significant to biological concepts because the digestive system and the health of human beings is a huge part of biology, and the human anatomy. Anything that can be done to make the human body, and our own bodies, specifically, should be considered important. Furthermore, the way that our bodies work, our digestive system, and the kings of things that staunch our appetites also relate to biology.

We should care because the obesity rate in America continues to climb, and something must be done about it, if we, the next generation, want to be healthy. It’s not only the adults that are unhealthy in this situation – seventeen percent of teenagers and children are obese. This is an epidemic, and we should do what we can to keep ourselves healthy. Even though water won’t do the entire job for us, we could use all the help we get.

Source: Graber, Cynthia. “Water Before Meals Means Fewer Calories Consumed.” Scientific American. August 24, 2010.

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