BEVERAGES, ALCOHOL, AND TOBACCO The Popularity of Beverages.

For some curious reason, the habit has grown up of taking a large part of the six glasses of water that we require daily in the form of mixtures known as beverages.

These beverages are always much more expensive than pure water; are often quite troublesome to secure and prepare; have little, or no, food value; are of doubtful value even in small amounts; and injurious in large ones.

Why they should ever have come into such universal use, in all races and in all ages of the world, is one of the standing puzzles of human nature.

They practically _all consist of from ninety to ninety-eight per cent_ of water, the food elements that may be added to them being in such trifling amounts as to be practically of no value.
They serve no known useful purpose in the body, save as a means of introducing the water which they contain; and yet mankind has used them ever since the dawn of history.
We Have no Natural Appetite for Beverages.