Recently, my friend asserted that distilled water was not safe to drink because it would cause you to lose minerals. That assertion seemed to violate common sense, in that you receive most of your minerals from your food. But, as I’m not an MD, I decided to check it out.
I found one site that did claim that drinking distilled water did have negative effects, but it sounded like bulls**t to me.
The FDA and EPA sites did not mention any health effects, pro, con or neutral other than the fact that the FDA regulates distilled water as a consumable product.
I know all the common sense arguments:
You get enough mineral content from food.
Any supposed deleterious effects of ‘pure’ water would be cancelled out; once the ‘pure’ water hit your stomach and was absorbed into the bloodstream, it’s no longer pure.
He’s the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armor, shouting ‘All Gods are Bastards!’
I can’t see any reason why it should do any harm. The contribution of minerals to your diet from non-distilled water is tiny, and after it reaches your stomach and mixes with the contents it isn’t distilled water anymore.
The only problem with it is that your mouth is accustomed to the taste of your own saliva, which contains salt. So flushing your mouth with distilled water leaves a sour taste as a reaction.
I recomend the link to everyone. Though the theory postulated seemed like cockamamie psuedo science , and at first I thought it one of the finest examples of half truths, misunderstandings and deliberate falsehoods I had read in years, one statement convinced me the author knew whereof he spoke …“The most toxic commercial beverages that people consume (i.e. cola beverages and other soft drinks) are made from distilled water.”…
There it is in a nut shell my friends.
Soft drinks are made from distilled water, soft drinks are bad for you, ergo, distilled water is bad for you. And all this time we thought it was the sugar and caffeine. If the bottlers would just switch to regular ol tap water they would have a “health beverage”, better yet West Texas gyp water, that stuff will nuetralize battery acid.
PS To protect myself from any " Aqueous Product Defamation Law", I would like to state that I am sure that any distilled water,or any water, produced by the Ergo Co. is just fine.
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
The excerpt that mr john quoted from the article, the notion asserted by Zoltan Rona that soft drinks are made from distilled water, is certainly a stretch. Distilled water is rather expensive to produce - you have to spend energy to heat the water to boil it, then wait for the energy to be dissipated while the water condenses. Bottlers don’t carefully craft one can at a time, but thousands or millions. I would suspect that soft drinks are made from at best deionized, or more probably charcoal filtered water, which is what this person suggests is better for you anyway, and this will still “spill huge amounts of calcium, magnesium and other trace
minerals into the urine.” And, it’s not like the stomach is actually acidic or anything the destructive acid couldn’t possibly come from our own digestive system. Most water consumed is not distilled water anyway, but “spring” water (or water straight out of the tap), which isn’t close to distilled.
Reading the web site, I hear echoes of those people “tampering with our precious bodily fluids.”
This kind of alarmist claptrap reminds me of the “SLS (sodium laurel/laureth sulfate) in my shampoo” scare. I would be willing to bet that far more people suffer serious ill effects from drinking e-coli, Cryptosporidium, microsporidia and Giardia lamblia tainted water than suffer any ill effects from switching to distilled water.
Does a true life example count? My aunt and uncle get all their drinking water from a cistern which they then run through a distiller to make it safe and contaminent free. They have been doing this since 1962. There you go, drinking distilled water daily for 38 years with no ill effects, and still going strong. Draw your own conclusions.
All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people.
Benefits? How 'bout if you live in a city that draws its water from the tail end of the great American sewer (i.e., the Mississippi River). Numerous studies have declared our city’s water too contaminated too drink. Of course, just as many studies say otherwise. I figure why take the chance while they argue. I’m not drinking the stuff.
So I get my drinking water delivered, as do most of my neighbors. Why distilled rather than spring? I read some years back about the little bacterial nasties living in most home delivered spring water. The article recommended going with distilled if you had the choice. I did, so I do. Only costs a few cents more per bottle and I keep it so cold, I don’t notice any difference in taste.
"No, in fact, just the opposite has been found to occur in cellular research studies. It is a mistaken belief that drinking pure distilled water reduces valuable minerals from living human tissues…
Does drinking distilled water leach minerals from the body? No, quite the opposite. If inorganic minerals (and other substances like chlorine, heavy metals, bacteria, etc.) are removed from tapwater, by converting it into pure distilled water, the result is improved absorption of all nutrients, including minerals, and improved elimination of wastes at the cellular level. "
When I worked for Coca-Cola, my office was right around the corner from the bottling line and I can testify: soft drinks are made with FILTERED tap water.
Mostly what get hurts with distilled water is your taste buds, the taste is vile.
There’s actually a lot to be said for municipal tap water; most “natural” water is contaminated by something, including nasties like cryptosporidium and giardia. There is no such thing as “pure water” anywhere on this planet.
The great majority of bottled waters are simply filled from the local tap. You’re paying for the convenience of it, or, if you live in an area where the water is full of sulphur or other naturally occuring substances that make the water taste odd or awful, you’re paying not to taste it.
Ahhhhh, nothing like Rocky Mtn. water…I feel so lucky to live in this area. The stuff in the tap tastes pretty good, glad I don’t have to resort to bottled water of any kind
distilled water is a whole lot cheaper than that evian crap. distilled water is bottled sterile so bacteria doesn’t multiply for ages like it does in that evian crap.
The distilled water taps in the UCLA Chemistry building all said “Distilled Water Do Not Drink”. To this day I wonder if there was something bad about drinking distilled water or if they just did not want everybody putting their own Sparkletts bottles under these taps.
It seems to me that drinking distilled water cannot be very good for the stomach lining. Remember that osmosis will drag ions from more concentrated source to the less concentrated. This would also cause the cells in your stomach lining to expand, which may make them more susceptible to the stomach acids.
I am not claiming that I have any hard evidence, but neither do any of the sites which had been provided. The site that claims drinking distilled water is good, is selling a distiller. Drinking deionized water leads too an early death seems like a bit of a stretch, but I have not seen the research.
The water coming out of the tap in the chemistry department is deionized water not distilled. This gives you all the benifits of distilled water plus the added flavor of dionizing resins. mmmmm goood
What about flouride? Don’t most municipalities still add flouride to the water? If you’re drinking distilled water (or spring water for that matter), are you at greater risk of tooth decay? Just wondering…
