DRINKING WITH MEALS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20620, 19 July 1930, Page 7 (Supplement)

DRINKING WITH MEALS

BY A lIARLEY STREET SPECIALIST. The question of fluid in diet has been referred to in previous notes, but many people ask if it is good or bad to practice to drink with meals, and this question demands a separate answer. Undoubtedly there aro people suffering from certain disturbances of digestion who are best advised to take their fluids an hour before or two hours after meals. Nevertheless the average person appears to be better when drinking with meals. For these probably the best practice is to sip their drink from time to time during tho course of the meal. 1o start this by taking a long drink is apt to upset normal digestion, not only by over dilution of digestive juices but acutally by checking their normal flow. For this reason the taking of soup as a first course is inadvisable —yet the practice survives in spite of tho attention that has been called to it from time to time. Probably the best place for soup as a course —if it must bo taken —would be after tho meat course. By that timo the secretion of digestive juices would be well under way. If soup is taken as part of a meal, then in any case the amount of fluid drunk with tho meal should be proportionately reduced, but a tumblerful of water is the least that tho average man should dririk.