Water Doesn't Hydrate?

MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Governments often do stupid things, but we have a new champ of ridiculous regulation.

Did you know water doesn't hydrate? That's pretty much what Europe's version of our FDA. is saying.

It ruled bottled water makers can't advertise that water prevents dehydration. If they claim it does, they could go to prison for two years.

Never mind that according to every dictionary and encyclopedia I've looked at, you can't hydrate without water or a drink that's mostly water.

If you're severely dehydrated, you might need more than water, but even little kids know you won't get dehydrated to begin with if you drink water.  But it took twenty-one professors three years of study and who-knows-how-much money to come up with the opposite of the obvious.

At a time when European economies are struggling to survive, focusing on this, as one British MP said "is stupidity writ large."

But we Americans can't be too quick to criticize. An act of Congress last week made it easier to count pizza sauce as a vegetable for school lunches.

Eating pizza to get my veggies? Feels like I won the lottery.