Uptake of Liquid Water

Abstract

The term “preformed water” is sometimes used to describe water taken in with the food or imbibed by drinking, presumably in order to distinguish it from “post-formed” water which results from oxidation of the food. But most of the water content of food can in principle be recovered in the liquid form by expression, and here we shall use the term “liquid water” to include both this and water in the form of droplets and such like. The distinction between these on the one hand and water vapour (which is also absorbed by some arthropods) on the other, is a useful one.