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I wouldn't worry as much about boiled potatoes as I would something like soaking/cooking grains. It's a matter of your level of concern. I rinse dry goods and

I wouldn't worry as much about boiled potatoes as I would something like soaking/cooking grains. It's a matter of your level of concern. I rinse dry goods and and vegetables with tap water, and steam with tap water, but I use expensive water for anything else. Mostly because I don't discard the water. Either the food absorbs all the water, or I accept a mushy, stewy, or soupy consistency. Steaming is better if you're going to use tap water and discard it. With the food out of the water there's less contamination as well as less nutrient loss. Filters are not perfect. Reverse osmosis or distillation is better (in theory). Anyone using a filter should pay attention to what it filters. Some filters don't even claim to filter lead. I think Brita and Pur still have multiple filter types that filter different things, and one type isn't a strict subset of the other.

deepsun 8y ago
After some googling, I concluded that filters in good-tap-water neighborhoods do more harm than good -- they filter out nutrients that we do need from water.
- taneq 8y ago
  What nutrients does tap water have in it? Fluoride?
  - CodeWriter23 8y ago
    Various minerals and electrolytes such as calcium, magnesium, potassium. I don’t count fluoride as a nutrient.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    All kinds of minerals and such. In fact totally clean water, without them, is harmful and poisonous: "Drinking absolutely pure water can kill you. All the water we normally drink – from taps, from bottles, from the garden hose – contains impurities which affect a property of water called tonicity. This is the ability of a solution to draw or repel water from ajacent solutions when separated by a membrane. Solutions that are hypertonic gain water, while hypotonic solutions lose water. Drinking water, which we usually think of as pure, really contains a whole mess of salts and sugars which make it slightly hypertonic. They also give water its taste. The cytoplasm in the cells of your body also have a tonicity. So, when they are exposed to hypertonic solutions, the cells themselves lose water and shrivel up. When they are in hypotonic solutions, they gain water, swelling up and bursting like a balloon. Absolutely pure water -with no impurities at all – is the most hypotonic solution. So, if you drink enough of it, your cells will start absorbing water. This disturbs the balance of electrolytes (electrically conductive ions) in your body. This is most seriously a problem in the brain, where water poisoning can lead to brain damage, coma and even death."
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- berlinstartup 8y ago
  Either you don't know what the word nutrient means, or you've been bamboozled--water does not/should not contain nutrients.
Marsymars 8y ago
> I rinse dry goods and and vegetables with tap water, and steam with tap water, but I use expensive water for anything else. Mostly because I don't discard the water. Either the food absorbs all the water, or I accept a mushy, stewy, or soupy consistency. I use roughly the same rule of thumb, but I've never been confident about applying it to beans. I often rinse and soak dry beans in bulk. I portion them out and freeze them after cooking, and don't really want to be freezing bean mush. They do absorb a lot of water, but between the rinsing/soaking/cooking process, it's also a lot of expensive water to be pouring out.

deepsun 8y ago

After some googling, I concluded that filters in good-tap-water neighborhoods do more harm than good -- they filter out nutrients that we do need from water.

taneq 8y ago
What nutrients does tap water have in it? Fluoride?
- CodeWriter23 8y ago
  Various minerals and electrolytes such as calcium, magnesium, potassium. I don’t count fluoride as a nutrient.
- coldtea 8y ago
  All kinds of minerals and such. In fact totally clean water, without them, is harmful and poisonous: "Drinking absolutely pure water can kill you. All the water we normally drink – from taps, from bottles, from the garden hose – contains impurities which affect a property of water called tonicity. This is the ability of a solution to draw or repel water from ajacent solutions when separated by a membrane. Solutions that are hypertonic gain water, while hypotonic solutions lose water. Drinking water, which we usually think of as pure, really contains a whole mess of salts and sugars which make it slightly hypertonic. They also give water its taste. The cytoplasm in the cells of your body also have a tonicity. So, when they are exposed to hypertonic solutions, the cells themselves lose water and shrivel up. When they are in hypotonic solutions, they gain water, swelling up and bursting like a balloon. Absolutely pure water -with no impurities at all – is the most hypotonic solution. So, if you drink enough of it, your cells will start absorbing water. This disturbs the balance of electrolytes (electrically conductive ions) in your body. This is most seriously a problem in the brain, where water poisoning can lead to brain damage, coma and even death."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
berlinstartup 8y ago
Either you don't know what the word nutrient means, or you've been bamboozled--water does not/should not contain nutrients.

Marsymars 8y ago

> I rinse dry goods and and vegetables with tap water, and steam with tap water, but I use expensive water for anything else. Mostly because I don't discard the water. Either the food absorbs all the water, or I accept a mushy, stewy, or soupy consistency. I use roughly the same rule of thumb, but I've never been confident about applying it to beans. I often rinse and soak dry beans in bulk. I portion them out and freeze them after cooking, and don't really want to be freezing bean mush. They do absorb a lot of water, but between the rinsing/soaking/cooking process, it's also a lot of expensive water to be pouring out.