Saturday, November 19, 2011

Parmesan cheese

There's a lovely fusion of mad scientists and bonkers bureaucrats in the Torygraph today:
EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration: A meeting of 21 scientists in Parma, Italy, concluded that reduced water content in the body was a symptom of dehydration and not something that drinking water could subsequently control.
I wonder if it's actually true?

6 comments:

Sou said...

Here's the ruling.

http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/1982.pdf

It all seems very weird to me, even for a test case.

James Annan said...

Thanks. So it looks roughly like, the judgement is saying: the claim was that water prevents dehydration by increasing water content in tissue, but low water content is not a risk factor but rather a symptom of dehydration, therefore it cannot be claimed on this basis that water prevents dehydration.

It seems this this could be sorted out if one specified that dehydration required a 5% (say) loss of water, then anything up to 4.5% loss would indeed be a risk factor (not a symptom), treatable by water.

I wonder if the test case was deliberately set up to fail, in order to undermine or perhaps change the regulations. In particular, the proponent seems to have made a pretty weak case.

skanky said...

http://www.krohnlegal.de/en/lawyers/hagenmeyer.htm

EliRabett said...

Taken internally or externally?

Fonso said...

This "dehydration" issue, interesting to me..

Epiphenom said...

Water treats dehydration, but it doesn't prevent it. If you are fully hydrated, and you drink water, you just pee it all out.

So the EU is right. Any drink containing water rehydrates - but it doesn't prevent dehydration.