4 ms·

Distilled water is the purest drinking water you can get on this planet (and you just need a $150 distiller producing about 1 gallon of clean water per run).

sottol 2y ago
It's also devoid of minerals so you might want to supplement, if you mean to consume distilled water.
mschuster91 2y ago
It's also unsafe to drink in larger quantities, as is seawater. Both will let you live for a few days if there is no other source of water, but anything longer and you're looking at serious levels of minerals mismatch.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since food will provide all the minerals you need. In very large quantities it's unsafe, but that's true of any kind of water.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since food will provide all the minerals you need. And that's a pretty ambitious assumption. A lot of people don't eat anything even close to a balanced diet, as evidenced by insane obesity rates or the return of malnutrition diseases like scurvy. [1] https://news.sky.com/story/scurvy-is-re-emerging-due-to-modern-diets-and-cost-of-living-pressures-doctors-in-australia-reveal-13239399 https://news.sky.com/story/scurvy-is-re-emerging-due-to-mode...
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      But we're talking about minerals here, common ones, not things like vitamins or iodine. Which mineral do you propose will be found in ordinary tap water but not in food? Anyway, I challenge you to come up with published evidence for your initial assertion there. I find it highly dubious. EDIT: I looked up calcium. The average tap water in the US contains about 50 mg/L of calcium. The minimum daily requirement for calcium intake is 1000 mg (1300 mg for teens). If you are depending on tap water for this mineral you're going to be in sad shape.
      - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
        > It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since food will provide all the minerals you need I mean, not OP, but you're the one who made the initial assertion. Maybe you should be the one providing published evidence?
        pfdietz 2y ago
        The way it works is that rebuttals need only be at the level of evidence of the initial claim. Hitchen's Razor: "what is presented without evidence may be dismissed without evidence." His claim is absurd on its face, due to the small quantity of minerals actually in water, compared to what is required. Food must be providing most of that input. I'm curious where this nonsense came from. It feels like another variety of nutrition superstition.
      - pcthrowaway 2y ago
        Fluoride is the only thing I can think of which is typically only encountered in municipal water in a typical diet. Most toothpaste has fluoride also, but not sure if the benefits are the same.
        pfdietz 2y ago
        The closest, I think, is copper. https://www.ars.usda.gov/arsuserfiles/80400525/articles/ndbc32_watermin.pdf https://www.ars.usda.gov/arsuserfiles/80400525/articles/ndbc... There is no US RDA for fluoride.
        z3ncyberpunk 2y ago
        Flouride has no benefits. Not even for tooth health once you reach adulthood
    - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
      Obesity isn't caused by bad diet. It's caused by overconsumption for a low effort lifestyle.
      - its_down_again 2y ago
        Respectfully, what experience or expertise backs your statement? As someone who has personally faced obesity and struggled with weight management over the years, I have a somewhat different perspective. Growing up, I was an obese child and even made the varsity tennis team as an underclassman at an obese BMI. I tried dieting, cardio, and nothing really helped me lose weight. I eventually found some success with a keto diet before my senior tennis season. However, I found I had to start eating carbs to stay competitive, which led to weight fluctuations but also better performance. Even now, as an adult, I find weight management complex—I've been close to obesity while running up to 80 miles a week in marathon training, hitting a 3:02 marathon (6:58/mile pace). After finishing the marathon and cutting back to 40-50weekly mileage, my weight just naturally decreased. My appetite was much less when I wasn't running such high mileage. For me, it's a journey that seems to involve many factors beyond just low physical effort or overconsumption.
        Vken 2y ago
        Obesity is a multifaceted issue that many people misunderstand in a patronizing if not malicious way. For many they wish the reason was as simple as them just being lazy, because then they would only need to tackle that one simple flaw. But it goes beyond having a lazy/sedentary lifestyle. Does it contribute? Absolutely, but there are examples of lazy/sedentary people who adopts an unhealthy diet and lifestyle who are on the opposite extreme in BMI. To treat the obesity epidemic in the States as an individual failing on all who find themselves in that category is to downplay the systemic failings that have allowed this to happen. It's kind of weird how this is simply another avenue people take to put themselves on a "I'm better than you" pedestal.
        kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
        I was a skinny fit person until a year ago when a significant event caused me serious injury that has required a reduction in my intense exercise. I'm still nominally "skinny" but pants are getting tighter after gaining 15+ pounds. I haven't changed my diet, which is fine by my standards but I don't obsess over it. Should I assume the role of a victim without agency and blame the food or the reduction in energy consumption without reducing energy intake? That's what the orthorexic religion is really all about: Nobody should be held accountable for their decisions because of the other who did something bad to them. This belief system doesn't want people to seek real solutions to their issues because that reduces the size of the flock who can be marketed to.
- jajko 2y ago
  Consuming seawater is generally a bad idea, people died of thirst before drinking the material in which they swam for some time (if documentaries are correct, haven't faced this myself)
  - greenavocado 2y ago
    Seawater has a high salt concentration—about 3.5%, or 35 grams of salt per liter. The human kidneys are limited in how much salt they can filter out; they need a lower salt concentration than what seawater has to effectively expel salt. When someone drinks seawater, the kidneys are forced to use more water from the body to dilute and excrete the excess salt. This actually leads to a net loss of water, worsening dehydration instead of hydrating the body.
hobs 2y ago
While that's true, effectively the same process is occurring to create rain, and if rain is contaminated so will your distillation stream. You'd need to do something that destroys it entirely if you want to remove the lighter molecules.
greenavocado 2y ago
VEVOR distiller is a lot cheaper than that
rozap 2y ago
PFBA is transported in rain and snow. That suggests that it sticks around in the vapor and condenses back into the liquid. There's no escaping it except to break it down, but that's the crux of the issue - the PFAS class of molecules are extremely energy intensive to break apart, which is why they don't break down naturally. Important to note that while the EPA says names acceptable level of 4PPT (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/14/epa-drinking-water-limits-pfas-forever-chemicals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/14/epa-drin...) for drinking water, they name that level out of pragmatism. They found health effects at every level, and the acceptable level is actually closer to 0. Also distillation is very energy intensive. A solar still makes sense if you need to do this a lot and live in a sunny place.
pvaldes 2y ago
Can't be drank without suffering serious diarrhea. People should expect to discover more nasty surprises now that scientists had being fired, and 'uneducated' is the goal
- r00fus 2y ago
  Entire countries survived on distilled water for decades (Hong Kong, etc). Electrolytes can be readily gotten by solid foods.
  - pvaldes 2y ago
    Trump was on power for less than a day, and here we are, talking about those electrolytes that plants crave, and forgetting about how osmosis really works. That was fast. Funny times ahead.

sottol 2y ago

It's also devoid of minerals so you might want to supplement, if you mean to consume distilled water.

mschuster91 2y ago

It's also unsafe to drink in larger quantities, as is seawater. Both will let you live for a few days if there is no other source of water, but anything longer and you're looking at serious levels of minerals mismatch.

pfdietz 2y ago
It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since food will provide all the minerals you need. In very large quantities it's unsafe, but that's true of any kind of water.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since food will provide all the minerals you need. And that's a pretty ambitious assumption. A lot of people don't eat anything even close to a balanced diet, as evidenced by insane obesity rates or the return of malnutrition diseases like scurvy. [1] https://news.sky.com/story/scurvy-is-re-emerging-due-to-modern-diets-and-cost-of-living-pressures-doctors-in-australia-reveal-13239399 https://news.sky.com/story/scurvy-is-re-emerging-due-to-mode...
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    But we're talking about minerals here, common ones, not things like vitamins or iodine. Which mineral do you propose will be found in ordinary tap water but not in food? Anyway, I challenge you to come up with published evidence for your initial assertion there. I find it highly dubious. EDIT: I looked up calcium. The average tap water in the US contains about 50 mg/L of calcium. The minimum daily requirement for calcium intake is 1000 mg (1300 mg for teens). If you are depending on tap water for this mineral you're going to be in sad shape.
    - BoiledCabbage 2y ago
      > It's safe to drink if you're eating a balanced diet, since food will provide all the minerals you need I mean, not OP, but you're the one who made the initial assertion. Maybe you should be the one providing published evidence?
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        The way it works is that rebuttals need only be at the level of evidence of the initial claim. Hitchen's Razor: "what is presented without evidence may be dismissed without evidence." His claim is absurd on its face, due to the small quantity of minerals actually in water, compared to what is required. Food must be providing most of that input. I'm curious where this nonsense came from. It feels like another variety of nutrition superstition.
    - pcthrowaway 2y ago
      Fluoride is the only thing I can think of which is typically only encountered in municipal water in a typical diet. Most toothpaste has fluoride also, but not sure if the benefits are the same.
      - pfdietz 2y ago
        The closest, I think, is copper. https://www.ars.usda.gov/arsuserfiles/80400525/articles/ndbc32_watermin.pdf https://www.ars.usda.gov/arsuserfiles/80400525/articles/ndbc... There is no US RDA for fluoride.
      - z3ncyberpunk 2y ago
        Flouride has no benefits. Not even for tooth health once you reach adulthood
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    Obesity isn't caused by bad diet. It's caused by overconsumption for a low effort lifestyle.
    - its_down_again 2y ago
      Respectfully, what experience or expertise backs your statement? As someone who has personally faced obesity and struggled with weight management over the years, I have a somewhat different perspective. Growing up, I was an obese child and even made the varsity tennis team as an underclassman at an obese BMI. I tried dieting, cardio, and nothing really helped me lose weight. I eventually found some success with a keto diet before my senior tennis season. However, I found I had to start eating carbs to stay competitive, which led to weight fluctuations but also better performance. Even now, as an adult, I find weight management complex—I've been close to obesity while running up to 80 miles a week in marathon training, hitting a 3:02 marathon (6:58/mile pace). After finishing the marathon and cutting back to 40-50weekly mileage, my weight just naturally decreased. My appetite was much less when I wasn't running such high mileage. For me, it's a journey that seems to involve many factors beyond just low physical effort or overconsumption.
      - Vken 2y ago
        Obesity is a multifaceted issue that many people misunderstand in a patronizing if not malicious way. For many they wish the reason was as simple as them just being lazy, because then they would only need to tackle that one simple flaw. But it goes beyond having a lazy/sedentary lifestyle. Does it contribute? Absolutely, but there are examples of lazy/sedentary people who adopts an unhealthy diet and lifestyle who are on the opposite extreme in BMI. To treat the obesity epidemic in the States as an individual failing on all who find themselves in that category is to downplay the systemic failings that have allowed this to happen. It's kind of weird how this is simply another avenue people take to put themselves on a "I'm better than you" pedestal.
      - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
        I was a skinny fit person until a year ago when a significant event caused me serious injury that has required a reduction in my intense exercise. I'm still nominally "skinny" but pants are getting tighter after gaining 15+ pounds. I haven't changed my diet, which is fine by my standards but I don't obsess over it. Should I assume the role of a victim without agency and blame the food or the reduction in energy consumption without reducing energy intake? That's what the orthorexic religion is really all about: Nobody should be held accountable for their decisions because of the other who did something bad to them. This belief system doesn't want people to seek real solutions to their issues because that reduces the size of the flock who can be marketed to.
jajko 2y ago
Consuming seawater is generally a bad idea, people died of thirst before drinking the material in which they swam for some time (if documentaries are correct, haven't faced this myself)
- greenavocado 2y ago
  Seawater has a high salt concentration—about 3.5%, or 35 grams of salt per liter. The human kidneys are limited in how much salt they can filter out; they need a lower salt concentration than what seawater has to effectively expel salt. When someone drinks seawater, the kidneys are forced to use more water from the body to dilute and excrete the excess salt. This actually leads to a net loss of water, worsening dehydration instead of hydrating the body.

hobs 2y ago

While that's true, effectively the same process is occurring to create rain, and if rain is contaminated so will your distillation stream. You'd need to do something that destroys it entirely if you want to remove the lighter molecules.

greenavocado 2y ago

VEVOR distiller is a lot cheaper than that

rozap 2y ago

PFBA is transported in rain and snow. That suggests that it sticks around in the vapor and condenses back into the liquid. There's no escaping it except to break it down, but that's the crux of the issue - the PFAS class of molecules are extremely energy intensive to break apart, which is why they don't break down naturally. Important to note that while the EPA says names acceptable level of 4PPT (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/14/epa-drinking-water-limits-pfas-forever-chemicals https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/14/epa-drin...) for drinking water, they name that level out of pragmatism. They found health effects at every level, and the acceptable level is actually closer to 0. Also distillation is very energy intensive. A solar still makes sense if you need to do this a lot and live in a sunny place.

pvaldes 2y ago

Can't be drank without suffering serious diarrhea. People should expect to discover more nasty surprises now that scientists had being fired, and 'uneducated' is the goal

r00fus 2y ago
Entire countries survived on distilled water for decades (Hong Kong, etc). Electrolytes can be readily gotten by solid foods.
- pvaldes 2y ago
  Trump was on power for less than a day, and here we are, talking about those electrolytes that plants crave, and forgetting about how osmosis really works. That was fast. Funny times ahead.