To wonder how we survived without constantly drinking water while working in previous decades?

[Chinsupmeloves]

A bit lighthearted but also a serious question!

Looking back at all the jobs I've had from age 16, working while at university and career after, it wasn't commonplace to have a Stanley or filled bottle nearby. We had breaks and mostly had a quick coffee and a food, same at lunchtime. No one took bottles of water, hot drinks or cans, that was it! At school also, juice at break and lunch then drink water at home.

A) On the one hand I feel the obsession with keeping hydrated has been propelled by the manufacturers of drinking vessels, especially with the imprinted quantities for times of the day, insulated to keep cool and so on. From this POV it seems OTT when people are walking around a supermarket with their bottles with the fear their bodies may shrivel up. In schools, having them on their desks, the bottle flipping, guzzling down a litre of juice from home in the first 10 mins of a lesson then desperate for the toilet, stating it's a human right to drink til you busrt! In addition the sales of plastic bottles of water to continue to carry around, you should see the bins overflowing with them in every classroom, so much for encouraging environmental values.

B) I've also realised yes it is important to keep hydrated during the day and we need more than a few cups of coffee as fluid to keep us sustained. I was one of the few, as a teacher, who would bring in a small carton of juice to sip at (days before reusable were used for anyrhing than to clip on your bike) as I got thirsty! I was however told off, that I shouldn't be drinking those few sips during lessons, yes truth. It was only a bit as drinking more would mean I would need to go to the loo, which I knew was impossible at break times when on duty or lunch when I had meetings, detentions, extra tuition. To walk to the staff toilets meant 2 blocks away outside, flights of stairs and a queue, so it was a scheduled comfort.

Back to the point...

AIBR Drinking during breaks and lunch is perfectly adequate, no need for constant sipping, especially in schools where it can cause so much disruption by those who take the mick.

AIBU We need to consistently sip to help us with talking, feeling well and focus.

As an adult I now value being able to have a bottle nearby at work, in the car on long journeys, but not a constant need everywhere I go. Xxx

^ This. Before the “water bottle era” people at work constantly had mugs of weak tea. My grandparents barely went half a hour without another sugary, milky tea. Warm weak orange squash or Ribena was drunk at every bloody occasion from after church to flasks of it taken around in the car. In the 80s and 90s there were vending machines everywhere with fizzy pop - we drank endless cans and bottles of it in school and outside, plus we used to take 1L and 2L old pop bottles refilled with water to school every day in the summer, especially if we’d frozen them overnight.

It’s just like those people who claim no-one used to “snack” between meals, especially the “older generations” — when my memories of the 70s, 80s and 90s was that you could hardly go twenty minutes at a time, especially amongst the “older generations”, without being offered a biscuit, a Mr Kipling fruit pie or some kind of boiled sweet. People were constantly eating chocolate bars, munching on biscuits and sucking on sweets from Polos to those fruit ones in the little wrapper! Every elderly person you went to see had a bag or two of sweets on the go, not to mention all the bloody biscuits. (Sweets and chocolate bars were a massive industry in the 70s and 80s and a bit less so today - just think of the sheer range of sweets, biscuits and chocolate bars there used to be then compared to these days.)

Yes, people carry around water and sip it these days. But I don’t know any adult who has a constant tea and biscuits habit the way every adult seemed to thirty or forty years ago. Or the constant canned fizzy drink habit we all had in the 90s. Water seems a lot healthier to me!

Quite. It’s nonsense.

You think multiple scientific peer reviews are ‘nonsense’? 😆

I can remember the first time I bought a bottle of water to take into work. It was in the early-mid 90s and suddenly it seemed the thing to do. Before that I don't even remember bottles of water being on sale in the shops. One day we were all happy having the (odd) glass of water out of the tap, the next we were all lugging around bottles of evian or volvic.

I think it’s more likely that people looking back are misremembering what they actually ate/drank and when. I bet as kids you were drinking a lot more squash and water than you remember. I was considered quite odd as a child for preferring plain water (I didn’t like the ubiquitous squash, but it was everywhere, all warm and soupy with that chemical orange taste). Kids had warm milk at school at break, cartons of prepackaged drinks in lunchboxes as well as those 80s lunchbox flasks with yet more squash in them; and school water on the table at lunchtime - so I bet you drank more of it than you remember, even if we weren’t allowed water during classes. By the 1990s we were already taking water bottles to school and allowed to have them in lessons and even in exams (clear pencil case, calculator and water bottle allowed in for GCSEs in the early 90s).

It is true that older generations don’t drink as much plain water - neither my dad nor MIL drink any, and I have no idea how they aren’t dessicated except for the fact that they are constantly drinking the milky teas and coffees all day. My mum will drink a cup of tea instead of water when she feels thirsty (despite it being caffeinated so a bit counterproductive). (Whereas I have two cups of coffee in the morning and then no other drinks except water the rest of the day.)

There are sometimes threads on MN about drinking water with meals. It genuinely seems to have been a weird old wives’ tale that some boomers and pre-boomer generations were brought up with, that you shouldn’t drink liquid with meals or it would damage your digestion. Bizarre, but so many posters said their older relatives believed this, and as a result were horrified by the dangerous Continental idea of having a jug of water on the table at mealtimes!

Squash (and juice from concentrate) was also a big industry in itself before we all switched to fresh fruit juice and smoothies. Older people liked barley water (ugh!) or lemon squash to flavour plain water, and kids were usually given orange or Ribena - but there were tropical fruit squashes, lime cordial, all sorts of drink flavourings. We just forget all those things because they were small details of life that we take for granted - but when did you let go to an event and get offered a cup of orange squash or lemon barley water? Yet the stuff sold by the absolute truckload in 1975 or 1985 — before we even get to the pop delivery man or soda stream! Water and water bottles today are just in one way substituting for those drinks you don’t see as much any more.

I’m an 80s kids, my overwhelming memory of school is being thirsty. By the time I got home I was so thirsty it was painful. I would need to drink multiple glasses of water as soon as I got home. Some people need to drink more than others.

I don’t have a massive water bottle (although I really don’t care if others do!) and I don’t take water with me every where but if I’m out for a long time I will take water with me. I hate feeling thirsty. I will always have water with me at work. I work 12hr shifts and breaks are far from guaranteed so having a water bottle is essential. If your work allows regular breaks and you can easily get a drink then maybe you don’t need a bottle with you, but that’s not everyone’s situation.

I remember reading about this study when my daughter was very small, it certainly wasn't the norm at all when I was at school, and I left in 1993.

It’s good to stay hydrated but it’s all a bit out of control now. Some people can’t seem to go on a ten minute outing with a water bottle in hand.

I disagree with those saying that people used to snack just as much in the past though. As a kid in the 80s and 90s I remember it was 3 meals a day and a snack when you got in from school. Morning break you might have an apple or whatever but not usually. Now children can’t seem to go for more than an hour or two without eating something!

Also, does anyone notice that adults have become bigger booze consumers? Might just be me 😂 but I remember when wine at dinner was a rare/special occasion event, not something a lot of us do on any old weeknight!

Children actually snacked more in the 80s than now in my experience - we even had biscuits at primary school at break time instead of fruit as today. I used to to have a miniature leather purse round my neck at primary school to hold my 2p for my daily biscuits. At secondary school there was a tuck shop selling chocolate and crisps at break time, and vending machines which meant we ate mars bars and Nik Naks all day between lessons. On the way home, we would go straight to the local shop for sweets and chocolate (and more cans of fizzy pop) for after school. My DD doesn’t do any of that — schools very much don’t have that kind of junk food snack culture quite as much now.

Anyone else's thread now bombarded with water bottle product ads? I think that's your answer OP!

Having 6 or 7 cups during the working day was perfectly normal for office workers.

Hmmm. I'm not so sure.

I started work (in offices) in the early 80s. In my first three jobs, it was one cup mid-morning and one cup mid-afternoon. In subsequent jobs over the intervening 40 years a first-thing in the morning and a straight after lunch cuppa have been added. ☕️ 🫖

The only time I buy a bottle of water is if I get a supermarket meal deal for lunch or if I'm about to get on a plane. I do have re-usable bottles of tap water in the fridge though but they rarely leave the house.

I am exactly the same. I honestly think those memories of thirst from school is what causes me to drink a lot of water now.

Im glad it’s not just me!! It’s such a clear memory for me, even when I was very young, of being constantly thirsty at school. I drink loads of water now, I hadn’t made the connection that it is probably because the memory of constant thirst at school.

there was a craze for bottles of water in the 1980s -
Perrier water - glass bottles with your meal
i used to buy Aqua libra

In my 70s, and have been told by Dr that I wee too often and I should try and hold it in a bit to retrain my bladder - he probably saw an old age of Tena pads on the horizon. I was trained by my mum to always use a loo if you saw one 'as you never know when the next one will appear 'so my bladder is, unfortunately, little and often, and not at all affected by how much I drink - I often wonder where it comes from. Slight derail.....

Tea breaks and tea ladies bring ing in tea. This would happen all day long.
Theres a funny story from James Cameron when he was filming Aliens in the UK. Big scene everything is serious and then front of nowhere the tea lady brings in tea and all of the workers down tools.

I forgot about that! Evian and Perrier everywhere.

It was Perrier in the 80s, and then San Pellegrino in the 90s!

Snacking in the 80’s?

We had a tuck shop at school, canteen open at dinner and break selling meals and snacks. Usually buy something on the way home. Go out at school dinner and have 2 twixes, packet of crisps and bottle of pop for lunch.

Have sweetie feasts in the weekends. Videos had just started. Used to buy piles of crap for that. We never stopped snacking in the 80’s

And Aqua Libre

Whereas I and most younger people I know have a cup of tea once a month or so… so we drink water.

This. I don’t get why people are so angry and disgusted by people drinking… water. It’s just water and it’s vital for the body to continue to function. ‘Slurping’ when you just mean having a drink.

Get over yourselves.

How DARE young people eat when they’re hungry and drink when thirsty instead of denying their bodily needs in favour of restriction like WE had to do?

Such a weird thing to care about and makes you all seem Victorian.

That's true, my first full time factory job was 8-6 with a 15 minute break in the morning and in the afternoon and a whole hour for lunch. What job do you get that in now?

I’m another one who remembers being very thirsty at school. I had my first uti when I was at primary school and my Mum had to get special permission from the headmaster to bring a Tupperware container with a drink of weak squash for break times. I was warned that I would get kidney problems if I didn’t drink enough, so the extra drinks continued through my time at primary school. I think our family doctor saved me from having long term bladder issues. I’m hoping not so many children these days get utis.

I work 8hrs and get 2 x 15 min breaks and a 40 min lunch! All paid