Why wasn't water used much for drinking in the middle ages?!
Why wasn't water used much for drinking in the middle ages?
Answers:
As it carried disease whereas alcohol kills bacteria so you cant get ill from it.
BECAUSE WATER CARRIED ALOT OF DISEAES
MAJOR CAUSE OF PLAQUE
water was contaminated
our water comes from a treatment plant and it doesn't have the bad bacteria in it. In the old days, the water had lots of bacteria and it couldn't be treated
Most water back then was filled with disease and they didn't understand the concepts of purifying at the time. They noticed that people drank alcohol didn't get as sick so they just did that.
They drank wine, beer and anything else that wasn't contaminated like the drinking water might have been. However, you need water to make beer. So the heat of fermenting the beer probably kills the bacteria in the water. All they knew was that they got sick drinking the water, but felt dam good drinking the beer and wine!
Hi
The reason was that it was difficult to keep water without it becoming polluted, so drinks such as mead and wine (with some alcohol and sugar to help kill bacteria) were more common.
Once upon a time - the 1600s or so I believe - the british beer industry was in uproar that tea was overtaking beer as the national breakfast drink. Of course beer was typically weaker in those days but hey - sounds fun.
The water quality in the middle ages was very poor so many people who drank it got sick. That is why people avioded water all together.
Water
Water was rarely drunk due to the difficulties in obtaining clean drinking water (typhoid and other water-borne diseases were highly prevalent). If water had to be drunk, spring water was preferred, as it was less likely to cause disease than river water or still water (pond water). Water was also believed to be bad for the digestion, as they believed that it would chill the stomach and hinder digestion of food.
I like the way that everyone is just automatically jumping in and agreeing with the basic premise of the question. The answers seem to suggest that the common people of Europe lived on a day to day liquid diet of straight alcohol. Who says that not much water was drunk? Where is it written? here are some counter arguments:
Population numbers were only a fraction of today, so human sources of pollution were minimal, and natural water systems such as streams and lakes were radically cleaner than now. The middle ages were at least 600 years prior to the Industrial revolution, so there were almost no non organic sources of contamination. Fermenting grapes and brewing beer is very time consuming and was done by hand. If done incorrectly they carry their own bio hazards, and the idea that people drank alcohol three times a day is far-fetched. most of today's juices weren't around, since they come from warm climates, rely on modern transport, and northern Europe was freaking cold, so hey would have been common only in season and only in the Mediterranean. Yes, they did drink the water. Yes they drank lots. yes a lot of people got sick and died from water-borne diseases like Typhoid and Cholera. The middles ages was no picnic. Happy New Year by the way.