I have visited some forums to find a hot debate about drinking water during meals, and the majority of members advocate that you should not , because water would dilute enzymes and induce indigestion. Heck no, drink water when eating for better digestion, and here are the reasons.

 Common sense tells us to observe and analyze the way man lived on this planet for millions of years. Humans had taken -and still- water from their food more than from drinking water. Almost all vegetables and fruits contain more than 80 percent of their weight as water, meat, fish, cheese, and even bread contain a good percentage of water. Were any food not containing water, it would not be spoiled. if it is not necessary for digestion, then why is the human body so designed to receive water at the same time of eating?

  Drinking water does not produce gross change in the conditions of digestion.

Drinking water during or after you eat will improve digestion. It helps breakdown the food in your stomach and keep your digestive system on track.

Have you ever tried to eat milk powder without drinking water? you feel an immediate need for drinking water to wash down the crumbles formed. This is exactly what happens to food in the stomach, food needs to be hydrated, broken down, and moved to be digested.

The stomach is not an inert pan, its walls move and secrete, and its portals are guarded by 2 valves (sphincters) that regulate movement of food, in and out. It has an inherent property of adjustment, and many times you feel the need for drinking while you eat.

There is another important property of the whole lining of the gastrointestinal canal, it is its capability of absorbing water and transporting it into the blood.

The whole digestive system does not find water as a strange element during digestion.

According to the Russian professor Ugolev, membrane digestion in man is defined as taking place on the surface of the cytoplasmic membranes of microvilli (lining of the small intestine), and constitute an intermediate type of digestion between extracellular digestion within the cavity of the gastrointestinal canal and intacellular breakdown within the cells.

It is like frying the food , the outermost layer that is in contact with the walls of the frying pan is the most part that is more submitted to browning. With that said, the contact between the food particles and gastrointestinal cells, requires that the particles are hydrated and very small, the thing that needs water. The more rapid these particles are formed, the more rapid and complete is the digestion process.

When you take water during meals, you feel a need to eat more and this is because all the food stuck on the walls of the gastrointestinal canal is flushed down in part, and the immediate loss of calories that are consumed by the body to raise the temperature of the water, to the same temperature of the body , and to move food particles downwards.

The baseline is that good digestion requires water - on scientific basis - so obey nature and drink while eating.