Buffett's 48 Years Without Water Is Folklore, Not a Health Plan

Would you take hydration advice from a man who says he hasn't had a glass of water since the 1970s? Millions of people are, in effect, being asked to do exactly that this week, and the internet's reaction is a mix of awe and a very reasonable "wait, what?"

Here is what we know. Bill Ackman told the Equity Mates Investing podcast that, at a dinner at his home, he asked Warren Buffett whether he drinks water. As Business Insider reports, Buffett replied that he hasn't had any in half a century. Other outlets round it to 48 years. The dinner is undated, and as IBTimes notes, the anecdote doesn't confirm his current habits.

Note the chain of custody: a secondhand recollection of a dinner-table remark, delivered by a billionaire about another billionaire. That's a great story. It is not data.

The joke is the evidence, and the evidence is thin

Buffett is, by long-standing reputation, a man who enjoys playing the folksy eccentric. Alpha Maven's summary of earlier coverage says he reportedly drinks five cans of Coke daily and once called himself "one-quarter Coca-Cola," with Coke supplying about 25% of his daily calories. He also said at a 1986 Berkshire meeting that he was switching to Cherry Coke after 48 years of allegiance to Pepsi.

Look at that number again. Forty-eight years of Pepsi loyalty in 1986; forty-eight years without water now. We aren't claiming anything is fabricated, but we'd say it's the kind of round, quotable figure that sounds more like a bit than a medical history. Maybe it's literal. Maybe it's a man who has told a good line so often it hardened into fact. Either way, nobody has verified it, and "he said so over dinner" is the whole case.

Survivorship bias is doing the heavy lifting

The reason this spreads is the reason it misleads. Buffett is 96, according to DNyuz, and he famously lives on Coke, fast food and sweet treats. Geneonline even frames it as a "paradox," a regimen of Coke, McDonald's breakfasts and Dairy Queen sundaes that defies medical warnings about heart disease and diabetes.

But a paradox needs a sample size of one to feel paradoxical. We see the one man who ate this way and is still famous. We don't see anyone who ate this way and didn't make it, because nobody writes viral headlines about them. That's survivorship bias in a Cherry Coke can.

And then there's everything else. We'd guess that genetics, money and plain luck matter for any long life, and we can't separate them from the soda, and neither can the commenters. Pointing at the cola as the secret, or as harmless, is a story we tell ourselves because it's funnier than "genetics, money and luck."

What to do with the legend

Enjoy it, and don't copy it. Our view: the useful reading of this story is the opposite of the viral one. If a rich man's habit looks like a loophole in the rules, it's far more likely that the rules apply to him less visibly, not that they don't apply.

Also worth noticing is the commercial gravy. Coca-Cola is one of Berkshire's landmark investments, per Alpha Maven. The man drinking the product runs a company that owns a piece of the brand. We aren't suggesting anything sinister, just that the folklore is very convenient for everyone involved, and a billionaire's affection for a brand is not a nutrition study.

The verdict: file this under "great dinner-party anecdote" next to the other tales of tycoons and their rituals. If you want a health plan, borrow Buffett's investing advice, not his beverage choices. That advice, as 247WallSt notes, is that ordinary savers are better off in low-cost funds tracking the S&P 500. The hydration advice is to drink some water. Your kidneys, we suspect, would agree.