The reason why minerals are controversial is that calcium and magnesium are minerals that are beneficial to the human body and they are also the minerals that are most plentifully found in water.  Everyone knows that minerals are beneficial to your body’s health, but not everyone knows that the minerals in water aren’t any more nutritional than dissolved rocks. Your body needs minerals to be healthy, however, the minerals in water can hardly be absorbed into the bloodstream because they are inorganic dissolved rock, and not the organic form found in whole food, like milk. This dissolved rock has a tendency to build up and deposit inside the body, especially if you have a deficiency that inhibits the compounds from being absorbed. So there are both good minerals and bad minerals in the same sense that there are good fats and bad fats.  Minerals may impart an alkaline flavor to the water, which some people may like, but in terms of their influence on the body’s health, the value is negligible, if not slightly detrimental in large doses. Eat right and you’ll get all the minerals you need, or take supplements to make up for an incomplete diet. Healthy individuals should never rely on drinking water for their daily dose of minerals.  Drinking water is great for cooling, flushing, hydrating, lubricating, and eliminating waste from your body, but it is generally the crudest source of minerals that you can ingest. Your body essentially demands that you to drink lots of water throughout the day, so it is important that you meet hydration needs without becoming overly dependent on tap water as a source of vitamins and minerals.

Purified water by distillation is, by legal definition, microbiologically pure, and free of dissolved rock. In this case, the source of the water does not matter as long as it meets these qualifications.  Water that’s purified is usually done so by distillation or reverse osmosis, and to a far lesser degree by deionization.  Distillation is boiling, which separates the dissolved solids into the boiling pot from the pure water steam, and the chemicals and volatile organic chemicals (VOC’s) through aeration and post-carbon filtration.  Distillation takes any source water and removes virtually all classes of contaminants, sometimes only hours before it’s bottled, and you put the water in your mouth.  Distillation is the most standardized and consistent process that is not dependent on the purity of its source water, and is 100% consistent, because it is powered by electricity. Reverse osmosis uses membrane separation to achieve the same result, but may not be as consistent if the membrane degrades. Deionization is used sparingly in only a very few springs, wells, and municipal water source bottling plants because it is the least consistent and most expensive method in 85% of the country.

Spring waters are natural and bubble up from below the earth’s surface, containing everything you find in natural waters, including fish, crayfish, bugs, plants, and microorganisms of all sorts. Spring water has become an idealized version of drinking water – one that was well envisioned because it was the first source of water that was naturally pure and fiercely protected by families for its purported health benefits. These same companies got rich off of romancing their products as the purest water on earth. Unfortunately, these sources of spring water are vulnerable to manmade pollution, high amounts of dissolved rock, and other natural pollutants.  Truthfully, the water quality in springs varies from spring to spring.   Springs all have unique properties and challenges, but are not uniformly treated. The IBWA has done much to standardize best practices, but many spring water companies do not join the organization or fail to conform even after they become members.  The best ones do join, but today it is possible to easily beat spring water purity and safety testing through state-of-the-art purification techniques.  Regardless of the purity of the spring, spring water is no match for purified water for purity and freshness. Even more disturbing is that there have been dozens of reports of “spring water” bottlers that are actually using treated local tap water. This strand of false marketing further emphasizes the point that there are few industry standards for spring water classification.

Alkaline or high PH waters taste salty and “mineraly”, like alka seltzer or Perrier.  These waters have been touted to heal cancer by multiple sources, namely multi level marketing firms, with no scientific third party testing lab certification.  These waters may appeal to some for their flavor, but it is clearly a marketing gimmick to say that they have any curative properties with which to fight cancer, just like it was a scam to claim that spa springs have healing properties.  These warm waters and romantic settings may lend themselves to the perception that we feel better, but they lack any scientific backing for any health claims. We now know that any feelings we may get are only temporary, and are much better dealt with in a permanent way through scientific medical means. While these homeopathic measures may have anecdotal backing, they rarely, if ever, have a scientific basis.

Purified water is achieved essentially through distillation, reverse osmosis, and to a lesser degree, deionization.  All three use different technologies to reach the same end product of drinking water which is scientifically measured near perfectly pure H2O, called legally purified water, that is microbiologically pure and less than 20 mg/l total dissolved solids.

Purified water is low PH water, which has been labeled as extremely healthy by some parties and only negligibly healthy by others.  While it has been proven purified water has no power to remove or leech beneficial minerals from the cells of your body, some evidence does show that purified water is better suited for helping your body excrete toxins and processing mineral deposits.  There is no scientific proof that purified water’s low PH contributes to the acidity of the human body because the PH of human stomach acid is 2.6, and far more acidic than the water itself.

Most people, by actual sales figures, now prefer the sweeter, lighter taste of purified water to water that is high in alkalinity. The number one, two, and three selling products in the bottled water industry today are all national brands and are purified, not spring, water.  Now, more and more smart, health-conscious families are discovering the effectiveness, sustainability, ease of maintenance and lower cost of purified water systems in the home instead of carting, buying, and lugging heavy cases of plastic bottles of water and then having to pay again to throw them away.  Water purification installation is a long-term investment that many homeowners are choosing, but one that is not widely known or followed by a majority of people.  This could certainly be due to huge advertising expenditures by bottled water companies for the top three brands, and the corresponding lack of funds in the drinking water systems industry for advertising for their brands to become better known as well as to overcome the negative myths and wives’ tales about the merits of in-home water filtration/purification.  Home water systems do exist that purify more effectively and more affordably than a years’ worth of bottled water purchases, but this is a fact that bottled water distributors do not want you to know.  The best technologies can last for 20+ years, so they are far less expensive than buying bottled water and have immediate sustainability benefits for the planet, and your own family’s lifestyle.

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