Why is that water is needed to live as opposed to alternative liquids? If coffee is just bean-flavoured water, why couldn’t you survive by only drinking coffee? If you were lost on a desert island and had only coffee, juice or soda to drink, could you survive?
In: Biology
I realize I’m a bit late to the party, but I think some stuff hasn’t been mentioned that might help/be interesting.
First off, it’s important to clarify “alternative liquids” in this situation. All the examples you mentioned, soda, juice, and coffee are all just water with extra bits in it: just like all drinking water has minerals/fluoride in it, those liquids just have a bit more, so would technically fil you water needs. Liquids that are not made up of water, such as oil or mercury (as an extreme example) would not work because our body needs the molecule H2O to function and cannot recreate that molecule from other things.
In terms of your question about surviving on just coffee or soda, yes, you could absolutely survive (there might be some complications though, I’ll mention them in the next paragraph). There are stories of [monks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_of_Soissons) drinking almost exclusively beer because they made so much and it was healthier in those times, and sailors at sea drinking alcoholic drinks because water would get bad stuff growing in it during long voyages. Most of this alcohol was about 0.5% however, so not nearly like drinking exclusively beer nowadays.
There are some drawbacks, however. The main one that others have mentioned is that some are diuretics, so while not all will actively dehydrate you, you won’t get as much hydration from the same amount of water. There are also plenty of other small issues, such as coca cola supposedly strips phosphorus/magnesium from your body, weakening your bones, or the reduced hydration can increase your odds of kidney stones, etc.
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