Why do some people hate drinking water?
Why do some people hate drinking water?
It's never made sense to me that some people refuse to drink water even if they know it keeps you functioning properly. The same people will complain of constipation or dry skin but don't want to do the thing that fixes their issues.
Former non-water drinker here.
I was addicted to caffeinated/carbonated sodas. I never had any problems drinking almost exclusively diet coke for a long time. My caffeine consumption was well over the FDA recommendation for maximum daily intake.
I would still drink water, especially when doing sports or exercise, but it wasn't my go-to for hydrating myself throughout the day.
Several times in my life, I quit drinking them, but I would always circle back around to it because I missed the taste more than anything, and I had never noticed any kind of significant health benefit to stopping.
Recently some months ago, I was having some pretty severe bladder issues. Sudden onset urge to urinate. Like going from 0-100 in a racecar, the rapid urgency was the main issue. One minute I was fine and if you asked if I needed to use the bathroom I'd say "Nah", and then 5 minutes later I'm literally dancing my way to the nearest toilet to just barely make it in time, like literally almost peeing my pants it was that bad.
Went to the doctor about this, obviously, and that was when he told me that the extreme caffeine intake is causing irritation in my bladder and diagnosed me with Overactive Bladder Syndrome. I was instructed to completely cut out caffeine from my regular drinking habits, no tea or sodas, but I could have a cup of coffee in the morning to get me going, although initially I would want to quit cold turkey to purge my system of caffeine and let my bladder settle down. So water it was. Within about a month, I started to feel more regular again and I didn't need to rush to pee as often and when I did I could hold it for longer periods of time.
Now I pretty much drink only water all the time. I take a big 54oz jug with me to work and refill it towards the end of the work day. I'll have a cup of coffee now and then in the mornings on weekdays, but I try not to make a habit of it, and I'll have a sip of a soda at the movies or something, but I don't even miss the taste of cola anymore. Occasionally I will buy the flavored waters at the grocery store just to get the carbonated experience, but I can't drink those all the time. Water is great, it just takes forever to get your brain used to the idea that not everything you put in your body needs to have flavor. It's super refreshing to get the filtered water pitcher right from the fridge, maybe pour it over a glass of ice, and drink it straight that way.
In short, chugging sodas never used to bother me at all, but I guess as I'm getting older my body is just not having that shit anymore. Just like how I can't eat straight junk food and not gain any weight like when I was a teenager, my metabolism has finally caught up with me on my soda/caffeine addiction and I had to cut that out too. I realize that I am better off now for it and I'm going to try and keep up the good habit I've started to form and keep drinking water.
For me it's because I've been drinking carbonated drinks for so long that flat water is awful to drink. I know it's good for me, I know I need to stop the carb drinks. I know I'll live a longer life if I do this. But it's somewhat like an addiction for me, it's really hard to quit and move to water.
The tap water in my area tastes pretty gross. I've tried the flavored water and never really found one that was good and didn't have weird taste or drinking effects. I would do carb water but it's so expensive, more expensive than my carb drinks now. So it's hard to even find a replacement.
It doesn't make sense to me that I don't like drinking water. When I lived in the desert, I would drink it all the time, but it's a habit that I've fallen out of. Strangely, I went back to the desert on a trip and immediately resumed drinking water again.
For me, I don't like the taste. I can taste the chlorine and fluroride and other stuff in the water. I have an RO system with carbon filter and then I need to have it near freezing. Even then, I need to put stuff in it like berries, cucumber or mint. I don't drink pop, sports drinks or other stuff like that. I do drink tea and coffee.
Yeah, my doctor told me that I'm dehydrated, so I'm trying.
Because their parents never taught them to.
I drink it now...on town water lol. Growing up outside of town proper in my area it did not taste good and left you more thirsty than when you started drinking it. The water was hard enough taking a shower felt like washing down with iron wool and if you stayed in more than five minutes you came out peeling. I was actually amazed the first time I lived in a town center on town water and the water didn't make my skin feel raw lol. I was floored when I lived in a beach town and not only was the water mild, something in the area made the water taste slightly sweet and enjoyable to drink instead of "somewhat metallic from old pipes, but inoffensive cause it's thirst quenching instead of thirst exacerbating".
People who don't drink water make me unnaturally irritated. It's just so crazy. "I don't breathe air because don't really like the taste".
I know I sound like an asshole. It shouldn't matter to me what you do. It's your body and your life.
Still...c'mon, like what? It's water. It brings life. It's the original thirst quencher. It's what your body needs. Just drink it.
Basically they're people who got caught in the food industries propaganda.
They might consciously know they need regular water, but their body is now craving sugar with every sip. If it's missing, it feels wrong.
Sugar needs to be much more regulated, especially for kids... Adults may be responsible enough to handle it but without regulation the industry will run wild and make everyone addicted.
I wondered this for a long while, but I've realized that I'm in a pretty privileged position. Where I live (the Netherlands) the tap water is not only drinkable, it's actually almost indistinguishable from mineral water. Certainly for me at least. I'm not much of a traveller, but when I was in Oostende in Belgium I remember the tap water was absolutely vile. It was (or at least tasted like) desalinated seawater. Instead of hydrating and refreshing it tasted stale and salty. If that was the only water I knew I probably would be drinking more refreshing stuff like ice tea or cola all day as well. When I got back to the Netherlands my first glass of tap water tasted like heaven.
I expect it's just a taste thing; water tastes fine but, like, it could taste more interesting if we added a bit of sugar or flavor to it (I was a huge justice fan).
For my own end, it was an easy way to keep my emotions/mood simulated or engaged against my depression that was low effort and easy to supply; that said, I switched entirely to water last year and, now fully comfortable drinking nothing but water and being fairly averse – previously –, I can't say the previous reasons really make that much of a difference for me, now. Maybe it's just having drank to my non-water content, already, but drinking nothing but water's been pretty great and removes low-key health fears I always had.
I drink as much water as I can handle at work so I can go take a leak and have my phone out and not risk getting in trouble with the boss. I don't eat breakfast or lunch. Since starting work 3 months ago I lost 30lbs. I'll eat anything for dinner and I haven't been trying to lose any weight.
I will add that moving to first shift after over a decade of second shift has been hard on my system and I've vomited in the mornings before work more often than not. It's like clockwork. I have learned that I've got a window of about 4 hours after work during which I can eat. Sticking to that keeps morning nausea at bay thanks to an empty stomach in the morning.
Anyways water is great. The other guy at work brings cases of bottled water which I try to understand. The water quality here is quite good and a majority of my water at work comes out of the tap. I have no complains and I wouldn't spend a dime more than I am now for what I get in addition to microplastics.
Like what? The toilet water?
The pipes in my residence are at least 60 years old, made of metal, and the resulting water tastes a bit suspect. I get water from the grocery store and put it in the water cooler. Costs about $10-20ish for 20 gallons, but probably far safer than what the tap provides.
Replacing all of the pipes would cost $19,000+. 😨
Sometime in my 20s I just switched to water only. It wasn't even a conscious decision really. Wasn't like one day I woke up and was like I'm just going to drink water now. Just one day I'd realize that you have been like 2 years since I drank any soft drink. So I tried drinking some Dr pepper which I loved. It was disgusting. I had someone try to see if there was something wrong with it and they said it tasted perfectly normal. And it's been that way for a long time now. I've tried little sips of new soft drinks that have come out that my friends like... And none of them taste good to me. Just room temp water, perfect.
I used to use mio to add a little flavor every now and then, but switch to Crystal light. I found the flavors to be more consistently good.
I don't like the taste of pure water. Filtered, bottled, doesn't matter. It tastes bitter and metallic and it always takes effort to choke down.
I keep a bottle of unsweetened juice and use a splash of that to add the bare minimum of flavor I need to be able to enjoy drinking it at home, and when I'm out and about I just drink it and suffer.
Ive seen people who grew up with flavored drinks because the parents were basically lazy or something and now as adults are simply conditioned to not drink anything without artificial flavor because to them artificial flavor is the normal baseline
For my fiance it's due to autism, we live in annars with amazing water quality and I drink it without issues. She can't handle the flavour sometimes though, she gets nauseous. The solution is to add sugar free flavouring to the water. Works pretty well and she actually drinks enough water now.
I grew up on well water that smelled like sulfur and was sometimes unsafe to drink.
The water fountains at school were HEAVILY chlorinated.
Water just wasn't really an option growing up or if it was you had to mask the taste with Koolaid or something.
I don't crave it. I'm not in the habit of drinking plain water. I have a zero water system now and I drink it a lot more but some people either have an access issue or never developed the habit due to similar factors as me.
When I grew up I didn’t like drinking water. I thought it tasted bland compared to all the sugary drinks. Looking back, I think our family struggled with sugar addiction without knowing it. We consumed quite a lot of sugar in my childhood.
It wasn’t until my teenage years I questioned the amount of sugary drinks I consumed. So I just cut off all sugary drinks and embraced the way of the water.
Today I’m a proud water enjoyer.
Some people are addicted to sugar to the point where every beverage must be sweet flavoured.
I have water, but othertimes I am sugar addicted so I want a different beverage.
Also I have had tap water in various places across Canada. Most are decent, some are especially delicious, some have awful after tastes and even smell weird (sulfur or chlorine). If that stuff runs to your home I can understand why people prefer bottled water, tea or soda instead of tap water.
Growing up, I didn't like water either because I didn't like the taste. No one around me could understand how I could dislike it because water supposedly tastes like nothing. BUT IT DOESN'T. WATER HAS FLAVOUR. Anyway, I later figured out that filtered tap water tastes a lot better than the bottled kind.
I can stand carbonated water and hate plain water. When I was a kid, my family wouldn't drink water but other beverages.
My kids (17 and 20 now) grew up with drinking water at home. Water was the thing to drink if you are thirsty, everything else was allowed but "something special" like a sweet. Going to a restaurant also was special, they could choose what they like.
While I still struggle with water - I manage, but I still drink sugar free soda as well, my adult kids can't understand how I like that sweet stuff all the time.
So I firmly believe your preference is what you grew up with. You can change it, but it takes effort.
If you only drink sugary drinks, water doesn't taste all that great in comparison.
I grew up drinking well water that tastes amazing. When I moved from home I have found that every other water tastes horrid (with a few exceptions). I can drink bad water when it is really cold. I know drinking water is good for me, I do force myself to drink it, but no where near as much as that well water.
This is our time to shine Hydro Homies!
Some people don't like the taste? It's like asking why people don't like to exercise even though it's good for them, or they complain about stiffness or what have you. I'm not a huge fan of the taste of water myself, but I drink it because it's good for me and free (once I purchases a filter anyway).
I don’t like drinking water because the fact is you don’t need that much of it. When I was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, walking 12 hours per day, I drank at most 3 liters, plus a pint for breakfast and a pint for dinner. So that’s 1 gallon total for extreme physical activity. In such a day I would pee maybe 3 or 4 times.
In normal life in an arid climate my water needs are about 1-1.5 liters. But this can entirely be covered by coffee or tea, a fizzy water, and maybe a beer or bedtime tea.
The only reason for the hydration obsession is excessive salt intake. Because salt and water are always a balancing act, excessive hydration will likely lead to salty snack cravings. If it didn’t we’d have a lot more cases of hyponatremia. The only serious side effect of being in the yellow pee club is kidney stones, but those are better prevented by lemon water and avoidance of spinach than excess hydration. I have no complaints of constipation or dry skin.
Drink when you’re thirsty. Eat when you’re hungry. Rest when you’re tired.
It tastes gross
It was probably the last thing to change as I got older but for most of my life I hated to drink water cause it all tasted bad to me
Grew up on well water, it tasted funny. Most water I tried to drink was from water fountains, tasted like copper. First bottled water I drank was Deja Blue, and it tasted like hose water. So I thought all water tasted like ass.
I didn't get that water could taste good until I drank actual bottled spring water. Now I have nice water filters that make my tap taste just fine, and I know what brands of water to buy if I need to.
Because it's annoying
To be fair, while drinking water is great and everyone should have an adequate fluid intake (if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated), water is not a guaranteed cure for constipation. I was in Paris for a week back in April and the only thing that helped me was taking a ducolax, my digestive system needed a reset after that long international flight and eating different food for a few days.
Some people live or grew up in areas where the water source tastes weird or gross, so they might have a mental association of water with a negative quality. Some people remark that water is generally flavorless. I've heard this from other people on the spectrum. I prefer water with some kind of flavor. Water without a flavor is only satisfying on a hot day or if you've been working out. This is possibly a side effect of growing up with a high sugar diet where you expect everything to taste sweeter. So it might be attributed to the sugar industry's "fat makes you fat, sugar is fine" lasting effect on the populace.
I love water, easily my most preferred beverage; I'll choose water even if my meal comes with a drink. But it makes me sick in the middle of the night or in the morning. I don't get it. It makes me nauseous. If I cut the water with juice or I drink coffee it's fine. If I wait until like 11:40 am, it's fine. But if I wake up parched at 4 am and I chug water like I want to, I'll feel sick. If I drink half a glass before breakfast? Sick. OJ? Fine any time. Coffee, apple juice, 2/3 apple juice with 1/3 water? All fine. What's wrong with me?
Once I bought a brita filtered pitcher that I keep in the fridge, it became easy to keep a water bottle around me and stay hydrated.
Rabies?
I don't understand this either, but if you don't like plain water, there are ways to make it taste different. Squeezed lemon in water is delicious, fizzy water is nice, there's always Crystal Light, lol.
I love so many drinks but if I could only have one, iced water is it. It's the best drink of all and goes with every food.
Wait people don't like drinking water? Drinking water (not warm) when you're thirsty is a really good feeling. I only struggled with forgetting to drink water when I'm not thirsty, but once I am I drink.
Seeing the sugar addiction and soda problem maybe it was because I didn't drink those regularly growing up. They were just treats. Also as a child we had fun eating certain fruits that were sour/bitter and then drink water after that, it makes the water taste sweet.
Maybe you can try eating/licking lemon/lime a bit and drink water later.
It's probably not the reason for everyone but where I live, tap water has a slightly rancid taste and bottled water used to taste like it was mixed with bleach. I used to not drink water because I thought that all water tasted like that but then we got a cheap water cooler about four or five years ago and the water from it tastes much better. So, I've been drinking water from a water cooler ever since.
Hard to even know where to start: https://www.dhmo.org/
Microplastics are just the tip of the iceberg. At this stage most of our planet's water is almost indistinguishable from pure dihydrogen monoxide.
These days, I mostly drink water. Growing up, however, I hated it. The area I lived in had very mineral-heavy water and it just tasted bad. Took years after moving away for me to even try drinking plain water again.
I drink lots of water, but I add coffee...
I just never got used to it. I grew up drinking club soda or sparkling mineral water. Also milk, I would drink liters of milk a day for a time, but no water. Flat water just doesn't do it for me. If it's ice cold, it's ok, but I never think "I feel like I'd like some water now".
My husband hates drinking water because his parents only gave him water to drink when he was sick. Otherwise it was all juice and milk.
I don't like drinking water. Obviously I can and do, but even then only filtered water with ice. But my main complaint is that it has no flavor, it's not very satisfying. Maybe it's because I was raised on soda, but I like something a little sweet and with a little flavor, so I drink slightly-sweetened iced tea.
I can only add my own personal experience - generally I can only stomach water in small amounts. It just doesn't go down as smoothly as other drinks (juice for me). It feels like my mouth/throat rejects it a tiny bit.
(for reference, I drink some filtered tap water after every cup of juice)
My water growing up had a weird taste so I didn't drink water until I moved away.