Lluís Serra Majem, full academician of the Royal European Academy of Doctors-Barcelona 1914 (RAED), is the editor of the work “Beverage consumption around the world: association with total water and energy intakes”, a monograph published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publications Institute (MDPI) in December 2017 that collects all the material that Nutrients magazine devoted to water intake in a special issue that bore the same title.
The work tries to evaluate the water consumption among the population of different climates and regions. “Fluid intake has hardly been evaluated, and hydration status has been measured only rarely in epidemiological studies, although guidelines have been established to determine how much water humans need to avoid dehydration and optimize physical and psychological function. There is limited data available on the total intake of water and beverages, therefore, the percentage of the population with inadequate water intake is unknown. There is a clear need for studies in different scenarios around the world that quantify the total water intake and drinks and explore the associations between the types of drinks consumed and the energy intake”, says the academician.
Therefore, the goal of both the book and the Nutrients special issue is to publish documents that detail the analysis of nutritional databases regarding the consumption of adequate amounts of total water. A rigorous study on how the consumption of beverages varies according to age, sex, day of the week and time of day and how it relates to total water intake. Serra Majem also invited the specialists involved in the work to analyse how much and in what proportion the energy of the beverages contributes to dietary patterns in countries around the world. “The key idea is to achieve an image of the actual water intake in the world in relation to current guidelines in order to promote adequate consumption of fluids in humans”, he concludes.
Serra Majem is director of the International Chair of Advanced Studies in Hydration of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and professor of Preventive Medicine and Public Health of the same university centre.
