Does drinking cold/very cold water make it harder to digest food/break down fat?
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Imagine your body is like a little factory that’s always working. One of its jobs is to keep your temperature stable. It likes when things are at a comfortable and warm 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). When you eat food, the little workers in your body (enzymes) are breaking down the food into smaller pieces so your body can use it for energy. They work best when it’s warm, like your body temperature.
Now, if you drink very cold water, your body has to use energy to warm it up to your body temperature. But this doesn’t really make it harder for your body to digest food or break down fat. The energy your body uses to warm up the water is very small, so it won’t have a big effect on how well your body can break down food or fat.
So, you can enjoy your cold water without worrying about it slowing down digestion. But remember, for overall health and weight management, it’s more important to focus on eating a balanced diet and getting regular exercise.
Human digestive enzymes (tiny proteins that are designed to scissor up fat, protein and sugars into smaller building blocks) work best at human body temperature…
However, water isn’t going to stay cold for more than a few seconds after you drink it.
Also, since the enzymes responsible for breaking down fat are added with the bile, and that doesn’t happen until food gets into the small intestine…
You only have to worry about water temperature if you’re drinking a lot of water at once, in which case it’s better to drink it lukewarm. Though generally only professional runners and firemen have to worry about that.
Your body is over 100 pounds (many tens of kilos) of mostly water. If you drink a large glass of cold water, that’s at most one pound (half a kilo). It will warm up to body temperature very quickly in your stomach, and thus likely have little impact on digestion.
The body doesn’t use energy to either heat cold stomach contents or cool warm stomach contents.
Heat IS energy, specifically the transfer of energy between two bodies or systems with a difference in temperature. Your body constantly produces thermal energy and is constantly trying to dissipate that thermal energy. Heat radiates outwards in all directions, and transfers by contact from a warm area to a cooler area.
When you consume something cold , it comes in contact with your warm stomach and heat transfers from your warm stomach to the cold food or drink. That food (and the thermal energy now stored within) is still INSIDE your body. Therefore , no energy is lost and no excess calories are burned to replace it.
If you consume something that is a higher temperature than your body, heat transfers that thermal energy to your body and your skin transfers it as heat to the air. The only time this would cause you to expend energy, is if the air in contact with your body was a higher temperature than the body. This would require the body to sweat in an attempt to maintain temperature equilibrium.
The only other effect on the body of cold food/drink is when you are hot or have exerted yourself it may cause pain/cramps. This is more likely when you have an empty or near empty stomach. Eating some previously hot solid foods cold (<45°) causes some people to experience indigestion.
Warm liquid doesn’t have an effect on digestion, but it can make you feel more full and eat less.
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