Q&A: I have been hearing recommendations to drink “pure” water. How is pure water different from other waters?
Jan
2012
2012
07
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Pure water. Where can that be found? Water is water is water.
Drink normal water from your faucet. Drain in through a Britta filter. It’s no different at all! Cities put a lot of money into ensuring that their water is safe and drinkable. With “Pure” water you may be missing out on a lot of important minerals.
Pure water is distilled water. You would not like it since it taste flat without the added minerals.
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I would think that the word “pure” would mean “nothing but” water. In its strictest sense, I’d take that to mean water with no impurities with nothing in it but hydrogen and oxygen. The closest you could get to that would be “distilled” water.
Its more likely that they meant water with nothing added such as flavorings or sweeteners.
My advice would be to drink any bottled water and you’ll do just fine.
The only pure water is distilled water. This is made by heating liquid water to transform it into steam, then chilling the steam to turn it back into water. Most of the impurities in the water don’t turn into steam, so they will remain back in the boiling kettle and never reach the collection jug.
Tap water usually comes from some natural source in our environment, like a river or lake or a spring. The water is mixed with materials from that environment. For instance, here in Florida most of our tap water comes from springs that bubble up through the limestone. Springs in other parts of the world may have a high sulfur content or other minerals. Same thing with lake and resevoir water; it picks up materials from the earth it touches.
You know how a steam iron (for pressing your clothes) will recommend that you use ONLY distilled water? That is so that as the water steams away it doesn’t leave behind the lime, sulfur, calcium or whatever to build up inside your iron and eventually clog up the passages the steam passes through. Some people also get “residue build up” from certain kinds of minerals; it builds up and creates stones like kidney stones and gall stones.
Don’t be fooled by bottled water calling itself “pure natural spring water” — it’s just tap water from a city or town that gets its drinking water from a spring. If I drank Zypherhills bottled water (from nearby Zypherhills, Florida), I’d soon have kidney stones from all the lime and calcium in our “natural” Florida spring water.
Sears (Kenmore brand) sells an attractive, easy to use counter-top water distriller for under $ 150. You don’t need to buy the expensive Kenmore distiller cleaner to remove the residue from the kettle. Every 100 gallons or so soak it overnight in white distilled vinegar and it will work just fine.
I am convinced that distilled water is better because many time I’ve given my own and friends’ pets the choice between tap and distilled or bottled and distilled. Every single time, the pets consistantly choose the distilled water. I have drinking distilled water for over 45 years and haven’t had a stone since I started. I have had several cats live into their 20s drinking only distilled water.