There’s a story making the rounds on websites, some newspapers, and wire services like UPI saying that the EU has banned any statement (such as on bottled water) that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration.”
We’ve been so accustomed to seeing stupidity from government lately, that this seemed plausible. But it isn’t.
Here’s a link link to the actual ruling:
There’s also a statement from EFSA clarifying the issue, they write:
Among those claims was a claim related to the role of water in the prevention of dehydration filed earlier this year by two German scientists. At the time, the claim had to be rejected by EFSA because it was filed under the wrong legal provision (Article 14 of Regulation 1924/2006/EC instead of Article 13). In short, Article 14 deals with diseases and illnesses whereas dehydration was not regarded by EFSA as a disease.
I’ve checked out these two pages and the rejection based on it being filed in the wrong context seems accurate. Thanks to Maurizio Morabito for pointing out the EFSA link.
A lot of people got taken in by the incorrect Newspaper and wire reports, and they continue to spread. Here’s Alec Rawls original story below.
Update: I’ve added Alec’s further comments below, claims and counterclaims leave this issue unresolved. – Anthony
Thanks to Anthony for including the EFSA response at the beginning of my post. Comparing the their “clarifications” with the actual ruling, however, I have to say that the Express reporting seems to be accurate, while the EFSA’s clarifications grossly misrepresent their ruling.
The clarification asserts that EFSA issued a pro-forma rejection of the proposed health claim on the grounds that dehydration is not recognized as a disease, leaving the implication that since no actual health claim was made, there would be no prohibition on making it. The ruling itself however, quite clearly does accept that dehydration IS a disease. Their actual grounds for rejecting the proposed claim was a bizarre assessment that the claim does not address a risk factor for the disease, but only a measure of the disease, and hence is not a valid claim about reduction of a risk factor.
This is incredibly stupid. Failure to drink enough water is not a risk factor for dehydration? Just to try to make this distinction is nonsensical enough, but then they get it wrong to boot, on the most trivially simple matter: can drinking water help prevent dehydration? Here are the key parts of the ruling:(1) Pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 health claims made on foods are prohibited unless they are authorised by the Commission in accordance with that Regulation and included in a list of permitted claims.
(6) … the applicant proposed water loss in tissues or reduced water content in tissues as risk factors of dehydration. On the basis of the data presented, the Authority concluded in its opinion received by the Commission and the Member States on 16 February 2011 that the proposed risk factors are measures of water depletion and thus are measures of the disease. Accordingly, as a risk factor in the development of a disease is not shown to be reduced, the claim does not comply with the requirements of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 and it should not be authorised.
They do declare the claim unauthorized, meaning disallowed, which would not be the case if they had ruled that it was not actually a health claim. So everything in the clarification is just a fraud. It seems they got embarassed when people noticed how stupid their ruling was and concocted a completely dishonest excuse.
Saturday not-so-funny: Europeans can now be imprisoned (2 yrs!) for claiming that water protects against dehydration
Guest post by Alec Rawls
“It took the 21 scientists on the panel three years of analysis into the link between water and dehydration to come to their extraordinary conclusion,” reports the UK Express. To be precise, the European Union has barred vendors from claiming that “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration.” Apparently there are some skeptics:
Perhaps a dictionary would have helped. Dehydration, from “hydor,” the Greek word for water, means to lose water, or suffer water deprivation.
“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are, highly paid, highly pensioned officials trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true,” says Conservative MEP Roger Helmer.
Wait a minute. How does an anti-science flat-earther like Helmer rate mainstream ink? Leave science to the scientists!
Okay. I prefer to drink beer anyway.
Richard in Vancouver@9.24pm
“….A small but courageous minority have long inveighed against the dangers, even the lethality of water. The first such researcher I know of is from the 1930s, the great Dr. William C. Dukenfield. After his great discovery he never drank water again, yet lived on to a happy old age. …”
Is this the great Doktor?
Very amusing……
[when asked why he never drank water] I’m afraid it will become habit-forming.
I never drink water because of the disgusting things fish do in it.
Once during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.
The laziest man I ever met put popcorn in his pancakes so they would turn over by themselves.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001211/bio
This whole thing is just plain weird. Bureaucracy is like sausage. You can eat it as long as you don’t know what’s in it or how it’s made.
I did find a more detailed paper from the EFSA about this
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/1982.pdf
They seem to say that dehydration isn’t a disease, merely a “condition of body water depletion”. Other vitamin deficiencies are considered diseases, like goiter, pellagra, scurvy, and rickets. I still don’t get their reasoning on this issue.
I cannot believe WUWT has allowed Herman van Rompuy to repeat Henry III’s noxious claims about hydrogen hydroxide, which he insultingly refers to as “DMHO”. Perhaps he does this because “hydrogen hydroxide” is such a long term, so I will abbreviate it as “HOH”. I repeat that it is vitally necessary that we have HOH in our atmosphere due to its crucial role in cloud-formation and thus rain. Without it we would have absolutely no food available. Furthermore its role as a greenhouse gas indepedently justifies its existence in our atmosphere because it prevents our nighttimes from being too cold to survive. Unlike carbon dioxide, the levels of hydrogen hydroxide in our atmosphere vary on a purely natural basis so there is absolutely no cause for concern (or serious possibility of altering it)
Any substance can be fatal in overdose; that is essentially the meaning of the term “overdose”. An overdose of HOH is extremely difficult to obtain. It is usually quite safe for an adult male to consume many litres per day, and it is passed naturally in both sweat and urine, so even if a superlus is consumed it can usually be dealt with straightforwardly. In fact, every case of adult hydrogen hydroxide overdose I’m familiar with involved consumption of over ten litres (i.e. over ten quarts), an amount of any substance that is difficult to consume by accident.
And Mr Van Rompuy’s plan to criminalise hydrogen hydroxide, even if it were good policy, is simply impossible to enforce. Aside from being the most prevalent of greenhouse gases, it also makes up the majority (by mass) of the oceans, and it’s crucial for the dissolution of oxygen necessary for marine animal life to flourish; without it, the oxygen would remain in the air where fish are unable to source it. What does he suggest we do? Replace the hyrogen hydroxide in the oceans with hydronium and protium?—they are only other substances which (together) are capable of preforming this vital task and are plausibly available in the huge quantities needed.
As I say, any attempts to ban or criminalise hydrogen hydroxide are as absurd as plans to ban or criminalise oxygen.
commieBob says: November 19, 2011 at 7:22 pm re the Good Samaritan
Remember Margaret Thatcher? Remember her 1980 comment “No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions; he had money as well. “
There are some conditions where water will not protect against dehydration, either because it cannot be absorbed fast enough or because the water is eliminated too quickly.
The Millennium Development Goals
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/
had nothing to say on DHMO but did include child health. And presumably access to clean water, sanitation and nutrition. Education would be handy also, not withstanding the control of rulers & theri gatekeepers and what we these days appreciate as freedom of speech, property & media, liberty & true democracy and also safety [of the child].
All UN Right of the Child issues.
In Australia, a consortium including ‘indigenous elders’ addressed sovereignty & water some decades ago, and continue to do so other other schema. eg
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3515126
http://www.climatechange.gov.au/~/media/publications/adaptation/Climate-change-risks-to-indigenous-communities-full-report.pdf
Anyway, away from verbal diarrhoea and onto the real…….
Diarrhoea, as I understand, being observed & treated, has the greatest prevalence in mortality & morbidity within the 0-5 year olds. Though elderly?, but many folk do not live to the 70-90 yr age bracket in some developing countries & geographical areas, so this can not be measured.
The below extract from an article is a reasonable overview of the scientfic discovery of ORT (Oral Rehydration Therapy)
‘…The simplicity of ORT (Oral Rehydration Therapy) contrasts starkly with the story of its discovery which overflows with abrasive personalities, professional jealousies, and scientific breakthroughs, as well as with an unusual degree of scientific cooperation. An analysis of the pertinent scientific papers alone fails to convey adequately the story of ORT and suggests that its development was a smooth, linear progression of innovations. Furthermore, it demonstrates how the prejudice of the medical establishment and its reverence for advanced technology can post pone life-saving discoveries.
http://rehydrate.org/ors/pdf/history-of-ort.pdf
David Sanders (paediatrician, Sth Africa) has long worked in the area of child health. Along with David Werner, who published the original and brilliant book Donde No Hay Doctor (Where There Is No Doctor) these two have been publishing, teaching & working towards improvements in health for many many years. Access to internet and such technologies has made some of their hard copy book
common sense less less difficult to access, however the issue of education (that is primary grade reading & writing) has lagged somewhat dismally behind their efforts over the years (Werner began his Sierra Madre, Mexico community development project in 1967).
Werner offers in The Politics of Primary Health Care & Child Survival
” ….embarressed to say that the above line of reasoning was more or less the one that my fellow health workers and I took 28 years ago in Project Piaxtla, Mexico, when we first began promoting what was later to become known as oral rehydartion therapy. Finding mothers reluctant to simply give their sick child a drink made of common household ingredients, we decided to trick them: ‘You want medicine, we’ll give you medicine!’. We began to package measured quantities of sugar, salt and baking soda into little plastic bags. We even added a pinch of strawberry Kool-Aid to colour it red, so it would look medicinal. And we promoted it as the Piaxtla Wonder Drug” 1997 p57
My overall impression of the work done by many community development ideologues
since the 60s, based on my work in the camps of Northern and Central Australian and knowledge of Timor & PNG, is summed up in this video, a publicly available snap of people, not leaders, being allowed to tell their own stories. We have yet to see this opportunity given to the people in the nth of Australia. it is still the ‘leaders’ and the media that speak on behalf of most.
Glimpses of real North Korean life behind the facade
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8711895.stm
There’s a story today in the Mail on Sunday about the BBC’s Harrabin accepting £15k from the UEA (where else?). This might or might not be true. But it’s a newspaper and a British one so rather than joining the likely debasement I recommend finding some kind of corroborating evidence.
@michel: It’s TOTAL intake, including coffe, tea, juice, beer, wine, food(!) etc – everything that contains water.
I’d like to see the names of the 21 “Scientists” [ ???? ] who took 3 years to come to the conclusion that led to this EU promulgation banning the advertising of water as a method of controlling dehydration.
Those 21 “scientists” and the recommendation they obviously gave to the EU bureaucrats has greatly reinforced my belief that there is no connection between getting an academic degree. particularly a high academic degree and the levels of intelligence and common sense of the degree applicant or holder..
In fact there seems to be an inverse relationship as the higher the academic qualifications, the greater the academic arrogance and therefore the lower the real and actual intelligence and common sense applied to a problem.
This is the undemocratic organization that we have been bullied into from a ‘Yes’ vote in 76 to join the Common Market a trading block that if left alone to remain ‘as is’ would now be the biggest and richest trading block in the world. As it is we have imposed politicians running bankrupt countries and the German Chancellor telling our PM that any referendum in the UK against the EU will be refused by Germany. Interference in the internal politics of another country an act of WAR and what started WW1
In outback Australia we have the odd few tourists that die from drinking too much water, in the mistaken belief that that a couple of gallons a day is needed because of the heat.
This H2o stuff needs to be taken with caution. A couple of gallons of beer a day in the outback seems to have no ill effect, this would be because of the nourishing ingredients and is referred to as a liquid lunch.
The effects also eliminate much of the heat stress, water is however valuable for making coffee and tea which contain the anti oxidants that kill the effects of the alcohol and allow the vitamins in the beer to keep you healthy and hydrated.
A kangaroo steak on the barbi with a little salad after sundown another beer or three and a perfect day in paradise ends with no problem with the dreaded H2O.
Well, I’ve had a jolly good laugh on an otherwise miserable Sunday morning. I’ve ended up not knowing which comments are serious, which are sarcastic and which are honest “leg-pulling”.
Being English, I know that one of the EU’s major priorities is to keep their people** in non-jobs and to provide plenty of potential work for lawyers, which eventually we all pay for.
(**There are 30,000 EU civil servants on top of whom there are the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament – all with their Presidents and supporting staff – total madness.)
henrythethird says:
November 19, 2011 at 6:10 pm
I’ve been telling people about this for years – it’s not CO2 we need to worry about, it’s the dreaded dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO)
———————–
Henry, with the amount of DHMO floating around the planet one would think a good Manhattan type project could be coordinated to come up with some safe use of this major pollutant.
Oh where, oh where are our scientists. Please come to our rescue, you must save us.
from the EFSA.
The Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 defines reduction of disease risk claims as claims which state that the consumption of a food “significantly reduces a risk factor in the development of a human disease”. Thus, for reduction of disease risk claims, the beneficial physiological effect (which the Regulation requires to be shown for the claim to be permitted) results from the reduction of a risk factor for the development of a human disease.
The Panel notes that dehydration was identified as the disease by the applicant. Dehydration is a condition of body water depletion.
…
The food that is the subject of the health claim is water.
The Panel considers that the food, water, which is the subject of the health claim, is sufficiently characterised.
…
The Panel notes that dehydration was identified as the disease by the applicant. Dehydration is a condition of body water depletion. Upon request for clarification on the risk factor, the applicant proposed “water loss in tissues” or “reduced water content in tissues” as risk factors, the reduction of which was proposed to lead to a reduction of the risk of development of dehydration.
…
The Panel considers that the proposed claim does not comply with the requirements for a disease risk reduction claim pursuant to Article 14 of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006.
What the EFSA are saying is that dehydration is not a disease. THEREFORE water cannot be used to alleviate the DISEASE called dehydration because it is not a disease. This is a fail on the applicants part.
All claims for disease prevention MUST be handled the same way. Otherwise snake oil will make a comeback
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/1982.pdf
Welcome to the Peoples’ Democratic Republic of the European Union! You’re next chaps & chapesses! Obama’s highly paid highly trained crack personal guard, the E.P.A. will see to it! 🙂
This is a typical example of a group of over-educated pseudo-intellectuals discussing and over-analyzing a single point. Eventually they convince themselves that “black = white” without ever realizing what a logical knot they’ve twisted themselves into. I’m actually not surprised it took three years. Building a logical pretzel like that isn’t easy!
When the unwashed masses start laughing at their pronouncement, they get all incensed, and insist the rest of us just can’t understand the exquisitely reasoned and nuanced intellectual point they’ve just proved.
Until they get themselves killed at the next zebra crossing.
Surely, this ruling will get laughed out of existence.
“A kangaroo steak on the barbi … ”
And before anyone criticizes wayne Job’s choice of meat, keep in mind that, unlike cows and sheep, kangaroos emit no methane, the most potent of greenhouse gases. Accordingly, wayne Job is actually saving the planet with this suggestion of substituting kangaroo for beef. (The logistics of a “cattle” drive of bounding kangaroos is another matter entirely …)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7551125.stm
barryjo is probably right about the French wine industry. I don’t know the EU for sure, but in the US allregulations and laws are designed to give an advantage to one corporation or one oligopolistic combine of corporations, and to make competition by smaller companies impossible.
Health and science are often given as pretexts, but laws exist solely to enrich the rich and starve the poor.
After sleeping on it I realized this issue has a much wide implication that many miss. This whole “ruling body” of the EU is all about implementing Codex. That is the United Nations CODEX ALIMENTARIUS, “Part of FAO and WHO food and veterinary standards activities.” http://www.codexalimentarius.net/
The internet skuttlebutt going around for the last couple of years is that Germany introduced standards to Codex for the MAXIMUM allowed for vitamins et al [“safe upper limits”] that are at or BELOW the current MINIMUM. Doctors would then be required to write prescriptions for more expensive products that we now get over the counter. (great for pharma’s bottom line) As we all know once the elite get an idea like this it is like the un-dead and keeps resurfacing in different forms.
FROM Wiki
As can be seen in our discussion here at WUWT “Natural and Herbal dietary supplements” are still targeted.
A discussion can be found here:
As far as I am concerned * “This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” is sufficient warning and we should leave it to the discretion of the ADULT to make a decision.
Most chilling is the fact the new “Food Safety Modernization Act” included a specific section binding the USA into following the directives of WTO (World Trade Organization)
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE in 2025 anyone??? Acquired through a FOIA request. (CIA) http://www.foia.cia.gov/2025/2025_Global_Governance.pdf
In an article in the The Global Journal Pascal Lamy, Director-General of the WTO, discussed how the Eropean Union is a template for an intermediate step along the way towards Global Governance in “Of What Use is Global Governance? 7/1/2010” http://theglobaljournal.net/article/view/56/
The World Trade Organization could be compared to the early European Union Trade Organization which has since morphed from a trade agreement into a governing body that is slowly reducing the nations of the EU to the sovereign status of the states in the USA.
More recent news from Pascal Lamy:
Need Truly Global Monetary System by Pascal Lamy: “Differently put, we need to do for international monetary relations what we already did for trade: move from the world of Hobbes towards the world of Kant.” http://theglobaljournal.net/article/view/256/
General Assembly Debates Stronger UN Role in Global Governance “…A proposal by the Director-General of the WTO (World Trade Organization), Pascal Lamy, to give the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) the same status as the Security Council received considerable support. In recent years there has been growing international support for strengthening ECOSOC’s role regarding global economic governance….” http://46.137.111.205/article/view/137/
Pascal Lamy is certainly some one to keep an eye on.
Kant, Hegel & Marx: “…Kantian philosophy was the basis on which the structure of Marxism was built – particularly as it was developed by Hegel….” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influences_on_Karl_Marx
This Dry Water EC Monty Pythonry follows on its other recent pronouncement that honey producers will have to list pollen content on the label and what amount is from GM plants.
Another view:
http://ricochet.com/main-feed/EU-Forbids-Claim-That-Water-Prevents-Dehydration
The Telegraph (UK) article that Smokey linked to has the offending statement (bold added):
Which lead to:
Thus the description of the condition (reduced body water content) was made a symptom of the disease (dehydration). Can a person have dehydration yet have a normal or elevated body water content? Were any of these “scientists” practicing medical professionals?
Smokey
Please read the referenced doc.
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/1982.pdf
The idiots who sent the request to the EU wanted to claim water prevented the disease of dehydration.
Dehydration is NOT a disease. The EU said that it was rejected because it was inappropriate to say it cured a disease.
There is a process to handle such requests. Each request must be lawfully examined. Otherwise some idiot would complain and the costs would be greater.
I’m sure you are blinkered enough to believe that 18 months of intense investigation ensued from the stupid request. It probably caused a couple of minutes laughing before the next submission was considered.
From some anonymous creature calling itself “the beast of traal” on November 20, 2011 at 8:57 am:
Alec Rawls already provided the link to the ruling and gave the relevant bits, which was incorporated into an Update to the post. Bold added:
The EU ruling says dehydration is a disease. Thus the EU says you are wrong.