In ancient times and places where potable water was scarce and people drank alcoholic beverages for substance, how were the people not dehydrated and hung over all the time?
In: Biology
An important thing to point out is that it was never the alcohol that made the water safe to drink. To kill bacteria you need about 60-70% alcohol. The thing that made the water safe was boiling, which is a step in the beer brewing process. Tea or anything made after boiling water would have been safe too.
Because they weren’t drinking hard liquor 24/7. Beer and other alcohol was heavily diluted.
That is almost entirely a modern day myth. There were systems in place to ensure the town’s water supply wasn’t contaminated and drinking water in most of the world was perfectly fine. They even had a system where tanners and blacksmiths and such would be fined if their cast offs made it into the water supply and they were only allowed to operate in certain areas of town to keep the water supply clean.
The laborer’s DID drink a lot of ale and beer while working but it was because the alcohol content was so low that it kept them hydrated and helped give them calories to keep up their energy. It was more like medieval Gatorade than actual alcohol as we think of it.
When you think of the kind of beer that people would drink all day, it’s nowhere near the alcohol volume that you’d expect from beer today – small beer back then was more like 1% abv. Many cultures that drank wine would dilute the wine with water to make it less harsh. So there were a lot of ways to minimize the amount of alcohol taken in while still using it to make water potable.
Their alcoholic drinks were WAYYY less strong than today’s. A plain beer in history might only be 2-3% alcohol, with modern day beers 4-5% is standard on the low end, some get up to 8%.
So, the dehydrating effects of their drinks really weren’t as serious. Also, in most cases, people still drank water, it was only really rare situations where the water wasn’t trusted in cities/urban areas. But even then, take ancient room, they built massive infrastructure (aqueducts) to bring water into their cities and into their fountains, fountains that people did drink out of. The idea that people never drank water is a fallacy.
You can sustain your water hydration with a 5% beer easily if that is all you drink. Your liver won’t like it, your kidneys won’t like it, probably your stomach and digestive system but you can sustain off beer for at least 10 years so far….
I always wondered this. Wouldnt people just feel like shit everyday of their lives?
While a lot of what people have pointed out, lower abv ect., are true. A lot of the aristocracy, including the founding fathers, drank enough to make a frat boy question if it was a good idea. Workers where given given a small amount of alcohol in colonial times. And they would supplement that with stills. However, a lot of the landed gentry would have a solid buzz going at all times.
It’s not a myth like the other commenter posted. I actually did a research paper on this, the answer is the alcohol content tended to be lower. Yes, typically running water and various water sources existed that weren’t as dangerous as we think, but that wasn’t true everywhere. People did drink beer/mead more frequently which was ultimately safer because the water is boiled as part of the process. It wasn’t instead of water, which I think is what the commenter means, but it was certainly safer.
They also found traces of tetracycline in vats from ancient Egypt, there is evidence to suggest it would have been anti bacterial as well.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26057861?seq=1
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100902094246.htm#:~:text=develop%20therapeutic%20agents.-,A%20chemical%20analysis%20of%20the%20bones%20of%20ancient%20Nubians%20shows,practice%20nearly%202%2C000%20years%20ago.
Edit: clarification, grammar.
If I find the paper, I’ll post the sources. I’m on my phone.
Just to add, beer generally has low enough alcohol content to not cause dehydration. Hard liquor though will dehydrate you
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