Does a Drink Increase Weight

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 920, 13 March 1930, Page 14

Does a Drink Increase Weight

A MELBOURNE INCIDENT JOCKEY GAINS 2\ POUNDS . Melbourne Jockey W. Hoysted puzzled punters and professors with a new aspect of an old problem a few days ago. Hoysted weighed out correctly, won the March Nursery at Flemington on Mura| Crown, a.nd then on weighing in was found two and a-half pounds too heavy. . His explanation was that after weighing-out ho drank some water, and the stewards accepted this explanation. Physiologists, however, will he rather puzzled, a.s it means that liis little drink consisted of two whole pints’ The average weighing-scales do not register accurately enough to deal with meals and drinks, so that there has always been keen popular controversy as to whether a human being weighs more after eating a chop or swallowing a half-pint than before But recently the effect has been thoroughly tested in physiological laboratories, arid the verdict is that J^ ate^er is taken i n —solid or liquid adds just its own weight to the previous weight of the body. But only immediately after being taken in. How Weight Goes Any digestible substance is broken up and absorbed, the unusable part being thrown off by the eliminating system, including the skin and lungs An average man loses weight at the rate of one and one-thiAl ounces an hour if he doesn’t nibble a biscuit or call- at a bar in the meantime. This is the weight of water thrown out by the breath and perspiration. So Jockey Hoysted’s case is a mysL> oun( * weight of water is fourfifths of a pint; two and a-half pounds (his gain of weight on weighing) equals two pints. But while the race was being run he would lose weight slightly, per breath and skin, and so must " ave got outside over a quart in the “little drink” he took after his weighing out! A quart, of course, is possible. There *s, however, a limit. Prof. Priestley once drank without harm one and a-fifth gallons of (spreading it* over six hours). But physiologists find that five and a-half pints taken “in one go” (per stomachtube) cause fits, and anything more Is fatal. It should be mentioned that animals --not teetotallers— wer© used for this depressing experiment,