Summary  Attitudes of healthcare professionals to the importance of hydration for health, wellness and performance were evaluated in six European countries. These included general medical practitioners (n = 600), nurses (n = 300), pharmacists (n = 550), nutritionists (n = 265) and dietitians (n = 265), spread across France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and the UK, who completed computer‐aided web or telephone interviews. The interviews assessed attitudes to the importance of hydration, how commonly they assess the hydration status of patients, and knowledge about recommended water intakes, sources of water for consumption and contribution from different beverages. All responders considered hydration an important issue and there was little difference in opinion between different healthcare providers. Responders in Mediterranean countries (particularly Italy and Spain, but also Greece to some extent) rated hydration more importantly than those in Germany and the UK (P < 0.001) and this was reflected in the higher frequency with which they reported that they assess the hydration status of patients (P < 0.001) and provide advice on the subject (P < 0.001). It was also demonstrated by a greater percentage of responders citing the necessity of optimal hydration for physical performance in these countries, compared with Germany and those in the UK and France (P < 0.001). Whether this was caused by climatic or cultural differences was not addressed by the study. The contribution of an appropriate hydration status to mental health was relatively poorly recognised, with less than 50% of responders in all countries citing this as a benefit and less than 30% of those in France and Italy citing it as a reason to provide advice. Healthcare professionals were reasonably knowledgeable about European Food Safety Authority adequate intakes for water for men and women but overestimated the contribution from food and underestimated that from beverages. The data highlight opportunities for education and improved clinical practice, especially in respect to the effects of hydration status on mental wellbeing and performance and the contribution of foods and beverages to total water intake.

Employing a policy-as-discourse approach, we explore how the language of choice, risk and responsibilisation influences cardiovascular disease policy. We analyse four key pieces of public health literature produced in the UK between 1999 and 2013 that consider the prevention and treatment of coronary heart disease: Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation; National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease; Mending Hearts and Brains and Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy. This critical discourse analysis problematises how neoliberal discourses of responsibilisation, risk and choice operate to govern health practices. Textual analysis reveals there are multiple dimensions evident in the way that responsibility for health is framed. Organisations are considered responsible ‘for’ illness prevention strategies and service provision, while individuals are conceptualised as responsible ‘to’ maintain healthy lifestyles. Conceptualising individuals as responsible health-conscious consumers enables a backward-looking narrative that holds individuals to account. Furthermore analysis reveals assumptions and messages that demonstrate the operation of moral discourses around patient behaviour. We suggest moral dimensions to public health strategies obscure the structural disparities that influence healthy life chances, imposing a system of limitations and exclusions that lead to allocation of liability and attributing blame for illness.

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Uncertainty, fear and the apparent contradictions of stagnation and rapid change are defining experiences of daily life for many of the poor and dispossessed in Donetsk, a post-industrial city in Eastern Ukraine. Throughout my fieldwork, exploring the ways in which people are coping with post-Soviet change, I struggled to make sense of people's lives recognizing that local people often say they are living 'non-sensical' lives. These tensions have remained during the process of writing up as I aim to create coherence without doing too much violence to local experiences and representations. Much has been written in recent years about the changing nature of anthropological fieldwork and writing, however as graduate students and young scholars we often find ourselves constrained in the ways we write. Raising questions of anthropological authority, representation and authenticity, this paper addresses the tensions I encountered through the demands of disciplinary orthodoxy, producing linear, ordered texts from disintegrated and fractured lives.

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