This is tangential to the other thread, What does water taste like.
We’ve learned in earlier threads that sugars and fats are yummy because our body needs them. Hence, we are programmed to find them to be tasty and delicious.
Water is arguably our most needed compound. So why isn’t water yummy as hell? And don’t tell me we’re just used to it. That’s crap. I want a damn answer! 
–Tim
i don’t know if i would say it’s yummy, but i certainly enjoy drinking water when i am thirsty.
Well, if you’re thirsty, cold, clear water is extremely refreshing. Think of the proverbial guy-dressed-in-rags crawling across the desert…He’s not gasping “Pizza, pizza” or “Chocolate, chocolate”. Someone in that situation would probably find plain old water to be about the “yummiest” thing imaginable, under the circumstances. Of course, most people these days think various sugar-laden drinks–colas and sweet iced tea–are even better, which makes sense if you think about it–those drinks contain both water and sugars (which an earlier thread has already given reasons why we like). It’s sort of a twofer.
Fats and sugars may or may not be in your mouth at any time but water always is, even when you’re dying of thirst. So if you had tastebuds that fired in response to water, they’d be firing all the time.
Unless I’m sleeping, you can be pretty sure I’ve got a fat or a sugar hidden away in this wonderful hole of tastiness, somewheres.
–Tim
Water, my favorite beverage. Did it ever occur to you that fat and sugar alone do not flavor everything. Minerals have tastes, my favorite being calcium with gives water a pleasently sweet taste. Lithium is also on the list, though I do not recall its effect on the water. Chemicals change the taste. Even the source effects the taste. Water from a fish pond will usualy taste fishy. Water from a certain county in Arizona will always taste happy (The lithium in the water). Water from the Atlantic will always taste salty (salt, sediments, dead animals, etc.) I have posted a similar post in regards to Ozonification. Look it up if you wish.
Paul
Doesn’t the combination of Lithium and water cause a tremendous chemical reaction? I remember reading as a kid (but never trying) about the exciting explosion caused when a Lithium battery was pierced and thrown in a swimming pool.
Also, foods are yummy so that we’ll prefer eating some solids over some others (Ever eat wood, or grass? That hamburger is much better, isn’t it?), but until humans arrived on the scene, water was pretty much it, as far as liquids go. Except maybe for crude oil or tar or magma, which would all be very unpleasent to drink, pretty much all liquids on the surface of the Earth will be mostly, if not all, water.
It all depends on the quantity of Lithium in water. If you have a teaspoon of lithium in a teaspoon of water somethign will happen. If you have a teaspoon of Lithium in a small pond then you probubly wont notice anything. If you have a teaspoon of lithium in a very large lake that provides a city with water then…you get the idea.
If water was yummy, maybe we’d drink too much? Thirst seems to be a very controllable feeling, while yummy food always taste good (more or less). Also, water doesn’t contain any molecules that stimulate taste buds or olfactory nerves.
Nonsense. If you ever do this experiment, you’ll see that the reaction is pretty similar irrespective of the amount of water involved. The reaction is quite mild between lithium and water, is localised at the surface of the metal and may or may not get hot enough to ignite the hydrogen gas evolved, the bubbles of which tend to make the metal float. Now get down to rubidium and caesium, and you’ve got a pretty violent explosive reaction.
lithium - it probably depends on the chemical form the lithium is in…is it in a “pure” state or is it a combined part of a molecule?
to the OP, water itself is pretty much tasteless (perhaps because we ourselves are mostly water? or perhaps because there’s not much to an H2O molecule to activate a taste bud other than the stuff dissolved in it).
as far as sugars being yummy, I think that is because we evolved a way to tell if fruit was ripe or not. later, we learned how to refine sugar and we started adding it to all kinds of food in large amounts.
I’m not sure about this myself (never tried this experiment), but I’ve heard that water is the most thirst-quenching drink.
Water doesn’t have anything in it to stimulate the taste buds, bud.
Blood should be mighty tasty cause your body is full of it, eh?
I think APB9999 hit it on the head. If water had a “taste”, then our tastebuds would be firing all the time, which would both be annoying and might cause interference with tasting other things and/or exhaust the various chemical channels that cause the taste bud neurons to fire.
Sua
Of course I am not talking about pure lithium. I am talking about natural occuring lithium that has mixed and melded with other minerals over the years. If you want its not lithium but a compound of lithium and this and that. Discussing chemical formulas is boring though. I will have more then enough of that next year in college.
A very tied Paul