[HN Gopher] Human taste buds can tell the difference between nor...
___________________________________________________________________
Human taste buds can tell the difference between normal and 'heavy'
water
Author : lnyan
Score : 149 points
Date : 2021-04-12 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencealert.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencealert.com)
| lurquer wrote:
| That would be a very difficult experiment to design. Whatever
| process one used to isolate heavy water would invariably affect
| the concentration of trace amounts of other molecules. While the
| two samples might taste subtly different, the difference might be
| due to some mineral picked up (or lost) in the separation
| process. I wonder how rigorously they controlled for this? Would
| you run a spectroscopic analysis on both samples to ensure they
| were identical but for the DO2? And, even then, one would have to
| wonder whether the density of the liquid may be having some
| subtle effect on the manner in which contaminants---even if
| identical in concentration in both samples---are being uptook
| into the taste nerves.
| nicklecompte wrote:
| For me this was the most interesting tidbit:
|
| > In tests with mice, however, the animals did not seem to prefer
| drinking heavy water over regular water, although they did show a
| preference for sugared water - suggesting that in mice, D2O does
| not elicit the same sweet taste that people can perceive.
|
| I was reminded that rodents also can't taste aspartame[1], and
| that in general human taste buds are more finely-tuned than many
| other mammals (we can detect isomers and many complex bitter
| chemicals, whereas many other animals can only do the amino
| acids, sodium, and simple carbohydrates).
|
| Having never drank it myself I was wondering if the sweet taste
| of heavy water is distinctly "artificial" in the way that
| sucralose/aspartame/etc in water is immediately distinguishable
| from regular sugar.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature726
| kazinator wrote:
| Wouldn't the olfactory bundle above your nose be a number of
| times larger than an entire rat's brain? Not to mention
| everything downstream of it ...
|
| A lot of the smell sensitivity comes from ("carefully tuned?")
| positive feedback loops int the olfactory systems which amplify
| small signals.
|
| Or something like that, supposedly. Not my area. At least, not
| the input side. On the output side of stink, I'm no theorist
| either; maker, for sure, though!
| amelius wrote:
| Wouldn't that be potentially dangerous to drink, given that lots
| of these deuterium atoms now become part of your body and have
| slightly different chemical characteristics than hydrogen atoms?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It is talked about in Thunderf00t's video. You essentially need
| to drink only heavy water for a week for it to be a problem. It
| is one of the least effective and most expensive way of
| poisoning yourself.
|
| But the most interesting part is when they tested it on mice.
| Mice are small and it doesn't take that much for heavy water to
| start having an effect. And what they noticed is that after
| some time, mice shunned the heavy water in favor of regular
| (light) water. Suggesting that mice are able to taste and
| recognize heavy water as harmful.
|
| By the way, that video is excellent. Thunderf00t is a troll,
| but when he stops ranting and starts doing science, he makes
| really great content.
| wisty wrote:
| > Thunderf00t is a troll
|
| He has some strident opinions on things outside his field
| (for example he's got a big problem with Christianity) but
| does that actually make him a troll?
| jhgb wrote:
| > on things outside his field (for example he's got a big
| problem with Christianity)
|
| For a hard scientist, that's almost a given. He'd be a
| lousy hard scientist if he didn't have a big problem with
| it (both when it comes to internal contradictions _and_ in
| the mismatch with the real world).
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| For a real scientist, that's a given (any religion,
| except pastafarianism)
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It depends on how you define a troll, in the original
| sense, no, but he definitely feeds on controversy.
|
| It is not his opinions, and in fact, I mostly tend to agree
| with these. It is more about if he disagrees with someone,
| he is going to lose all objectivity and attack him like a
| rabid dog, backed by all his fans. It is surprising
| considering that he looks like a competent scientist and
| promotes rationality.
|
| For example, it looks like he has a grudge against Elon
| Musk for some reason. No problem with that, I am a bit of a
| hater myself. However, some (not all) of his argument are
| simply wrong, or at least incomplete, and he repeats them
| over and over, mixed with movie clips meant to ridicule,
| and he never backs down.
|
| Even when it supports my ideas and I enjoy two minutes of
| hate as much as anyone, I think it is toxic. The only
| purpose I see to these videos is to reinforce ideas people
| already have and turn them into zealots instead of
| educating others. Not so different from the cults he
| denounces.
| db48x wrote:
| Yes, I have a similar opinion. It one thing if he's
| tearing down yet another scam Kickstarter that's just the
| same dehumidifier you can buy at any store, but when he's
| wrong about something it's a problem.
|
| I also find those videos very grating and tiresome.
| That's not entirely his fault though, some of the videos
| he excerpts from are themselves dreadful. Leaving that
| part aside, the mocking tone he adopts just isn't
| necessary.
|
| On the other hand, when he's presenting an actual
| technical topic his videos are great.
| [deleted]
| rcxdude wrote:
| Yeah, this is the problem. He's also all too willing to
| engage in stupid slap-fights with flat earthers, who are
| very happy to antagonise him for more publicity.
| autokad wrote:
| why do you hate elon musk?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| The way he over-promises, his PR stunts, and worst of
| all, his cult-like following. I also think that Hyperloop
| is a borderline scam.
|
| And it is a shame because SpaceX is awesome and I credit
| Tesla for making electric cars people actually want to
| drive, and PayPal served me well in the early days.
| gamache wrote:
| You are drinking deuterium already. 1/3200th of the water you
| drink is HDO.
| Karsteski wrote:
| It is, but only a long period of time. A glass of deuterated
| water won't do anything to you, but if you drank it for weeks
| on end you'd have some serious problems
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Yes, it is dangerous to animals and therefore probably humans
| [EDIT: in sufficient quantities, as OscarCunningham points out
| in a comment]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_animals
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| The section directly below that says it's fine in small doses
| but dangerous if drunk continuously.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Toxicity_in_humans
|
| I think sinking ice cubes would be a fun party trick.
| robocat wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLiirA5ooS0 shows that
| deuterium ice sinks, but the density is only a bit more
| than water, so it doesn't sink "properly". Although perhaps
| they didn't get pure deuterium, since heavy water is about
| 11% denser than regular water.
|
| For better sinking ice, mix deuterium and oxygen-18.
|
| For the best sinking ice use super heavy water[1]
| (substitute tritium instead of deuterium) although it is
| toxic: "The median lethal dose (LD50) of tritium
| assimilated by the body is estimated to be 370 GBq (10 Ci).
| Higher doses can be tolerated with forced fluid intake to
| reduce the biological half life."
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritiated_water
| josefx wrote:
| > For better sinking ice, mix deuterium and oxygen-18.
|
| One of the videos linked by other comments mentioned that
| they spend $1000 on a tiny amount of O18 to see if it
| would also taste sweet. Ice cubes made from that seem to
| be the kind of party trick best reserved for celebrating
| your first billion.
| kaybe wrote:
| I could see the physics department doing this, if it wasn't
| that expensive. They used to have cocktails with dry ice in
| them - not sure how legal that is, but it's great fun. If
| you breathe in the vapour you can taste the drink quite
| strongly already.
|
| (Note, if you put too much dry ice the water in your drink
| will freeze and that can affect the taste quite
| negatively..)
| [deleted]
| trasz wrote:
| Dry ice is somewhat meh - it's so common it's being used
| for cleaning. You can use it to prepare vodka cubes,
| though :-)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Why would that be illegal? (besides using uni stuff to do
| cocktails)
| db48x wrote:
| Swallowing dry ice could cause injury, which means that
| using dry ice in a cocktail could easily be considered
| negligence.
| [deleted]
| rogers18445 wrote:
| You would need to drink enough of it for it to form a
| significant fraction of your body's water which would take days
| with fasting and weeks otherwise. And 10's of 1000's of $.
| ampdepolymerase wrote:
| It would be interesting to see whether the sweet taste is
| because of pure coincidence or whether it is because a small
| quantity of heavy water confers an evolutionary advantage.
| amelius wrote:
| I'd be curious at what concentration people can detect heavy
| water. My guess is that this concentration does not occur
| naturally, but I could be wrong.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm betting the latter. Consider that lead also tastes
| sweet[1], that's why kids would eat lead paint. Our ancestors
| were never placed in situations where eating either lead or
| heavy water could change evolutionary outcomes because these
| substances are not easily obtained in high concentrations in
| nature.
|
| [1] https://www.thoughtco.com/sugar-of-lead-3976065
| teraflop wrote:
| I assume you mean "former", not "latter"?
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's coincidence. Our ancestors didn't have access to heavy
| water.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Heavy water exists naturally. It is reasonably common, and
| since it has a different density there might well be
| natural or biological processes which might concentrate
| it...
| Footkerchief wrote:
| Indications are that it's generally bad for eukaryotes: https
| ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_biologic...
| Sharlin wrote:
| Another thing that tastes sweet is lead paint. That did not
| work out well.
| ksaj wrote:
| Also antifreeze, which dogs unfortunately find
| irresistible.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Evolution doesn't need mutations that give perfection just
| an advantage on average. How much does lead paint occur in
| the environment humans traditionally evolved in?
| dekhn wrote:
| Nonetheless, there are proteins whose role is to bind and
| sequester lead, which means there was some functional
| selection to avoid lead toxicity.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Lead isn't good for the brain or nervous system, but does
| it have any benefits?
|
| Some poisons for example help disease resistance because
| the disease pathogens are harmed even more by the poison
| than we are.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| We do not know of any, either in humans or animals.
| jerf wrote:
| "Because of that altered bonding behavior - which can affect
| bodily chemistry if you ingest deuterium in D2O - scientists
| generally say it's not a great idea to drink heavy water, at
| least not in high doses."
|
| But also note your body already has to be robust against it to
| some degree, because water will normally have a certain amount
| of heavy water in it naturally, so it's not like it's a deadly
| deadly toxin. It's just something you shouldn't drink a lot of.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is true for all poisons though. It's about dose...
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| And that includes plain water as well.
| justinjlynn wrote:
| Hence "the dose makes the poison".
| jerf wrote:
| My point is simply that this isn't like botulism toxin or
| something, but something that will require a much larger
| dose. I'm targeting a correct mental model. It's dangerous,
| but not _that_ dangerous.
| sndean wrote:
| It looks like from the paper's methods [0] that they did "sip
| and spit," maybe similar to wine tasting? Plus rinsing with
| normal water in between tastes. I think that, plus D2O not
| being particularly poisonous in low quantities, would make that
| a safe enough experiment.
|
| In the same paragraph they say "All research procedures were
| ethically approved by the Committee for the Use of Human
| Subjects in Research" at their university, so they probably had
| to provide a lot of evidence that it was safe beforehand.
|
| [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-021-01964-y#Sec10
| simonh wrote:
| Several grams of deuterated water is sometimes ingested as
| part of metabolic tracing experiments, so it's known to be
| safe at that level.
| imtringued wrote:
| It would be extremely dangerous to your bank account.
| ortusdux wrote:
| _" But, you have to continuously drink and eat only heavy water
| for several days to see an effect. Replacing 20% of regular
| water in cells with heavy water is survivable for humans and
| other mammals (although not recommended). Swapping 25% of water
| with heavy water causes (sometimes irreversible) sterilization.
| Replacing 50% of water with heavy water is lethal. It's not a
| pretty death, either. Heavy water poisoning resembles radiation
| poisoning or cytotoxic poisoning from chemotherapy."_
|
| https://sciencenotes.org/can-you-drink-heavy-water-is-it-saf...
| aaroninsf wrote:
| OK, so heavy water has a molecular weight ~11% greater than
| plain old water.
|
| If you replace 20% of your cellular water with heavy,
|
| you gain about 1.7% of your weight maybe (water being ~80% of
| you).
|
| I see an angle here for a boxing thriller.
|
| "Joe, this taste I dunno, sweet to you? No? Huh."
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Alcohol makes us lose balance, but heavy water has the
| opposite effect. Could a 'heavy' gin and tonic get us drunk
| but keep us upright?
|
| https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/the-last-
| retort/30055...
| kergonath wrote:
| I would try that. For science, of course.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I like to imagine this is the Jimmy Neutron origin story.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| You need to drink quite a bit of heavy water before it starts
| becoming hazardous.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Potentially yes, but also consider that a human is 50+% water
| by weight.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| A side effect of improving the taste of tap water would be less
| soft drink consumption. I hate the taste of chlorine in the
| water. Its probably bad for you if you bath and shower in it too.
| Britta Filters for the tap water, and charcoal filter for the
| shower head are two very inexpensive ways to improve your quality
| of life. Highly recommend both. And probably some sort of glass
| bottle for on the go water consumption. I can taste the plastic
| in water bottles, especially on a hot summer day while it was
| left in the car.
| spike021 wrote:
| Yup. My parents live up near San Francisco. Their water comes out
| of the tap totally clear, tastes "fresh".
|
| I've lived in multiple San Jose homes now, including SJSU dorms,
| and in every one of those, the water came out of the tap cloudy
| and if you let any dishes/silverware air dry after washing, they
| have a significant amount of white precipitate on them that
| becomes impossible to clean off without some kind of mild acid,
| like vinegar. At my parents house you can get water spots on
| things but they're typically quite light and easy to clean off.
|
| In addition to that, the flavor just tastes very wrong in San
| Jose. I lived in SJ for 9 years and never got used to it, either.
|
| There are some sites that have PPM ratings for different cities
| in California and it seems like San Jose consistently rates as
| one of the highest.
|
| edit: I was mistaken, please disregard.
| timw4mail wrote:
| That's just hard water
| ramraj07 wrote:
| I remember sitting in an APS talk 7 or so years back where the
| room more or less laughed at a researcher presenting hypotheses
| on how deuterium detection might be possible in fruitfly
| proteins.
|
| I hated that entire room and what it stood for. Philistines
| masquerading as professors. No scientific talk which was done
| systematically should be laughed at like that.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Agreed, the suppression of research in this area, for decades,
| reveals a fundamental failure in how we as a society conduct
| science.
|
| E.g., now that it turns out that saturated fat is _wholly
| harmless_ , the past five decades spent _failing_ to
| investigate why meat consumption really causes circulatory
| disease is practically criminal. How many early deaths are
| traceable to this sustained failure? How many, to having
| continued permitting trans fats in stuff sold as if it were
| food? How many to oxidized unsaturated fats?
|
| People like to insist that science always gets it right in the
| end, but these corrections are always isolated flukes. The
| pattern suggests a clear majority never get corrected.
|
| mRNA vaccines are just such a fluke; their inventor spent her
| whole career being spit on. How many died, for lack of mRNA
| vaccines in past decades when the method could have accelerated
| vaccine development by years back then, instead of only now?
|
| A great fount of suppressed truths must lie dreaming in the
| work of women and minorities driven from their fields.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc87uvk8GBc
| fabian2k wrote:
| I'd be very skeptical that there is an actual biological
| mechanism that detects deuterium intentionally, there simply
| isn't really any need to this given that D2O is very rare. I'm
| not saying they don't exist, but there is no compelling
| argument why they would evolve. I'm not saying this can't
| exist, but I'd need some pretty convincing evidence that
| there's an actual biological reason for such a mechanism.
|
| But of course detection would be possible, it has been known
| for many decades that different isotopes change reaction
| kinetics
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_isotope_effect). That is
| a measurable chemical effect, so of course a protein could make
| use of it. This is something I was taught in university, so
| this is not any kind of obscure knowledge, but mainstream
| chemistry.
| omgJustTest wrote:
| As an student, ta and undergraduate instructor the one thing
| that offended me outright was people being discouraged from
| engaging. 99% of instruction is communication, largely one
| direction and engagement is the only data to evaluate the
| effectiveness.
|
| To me it reinforces the one correct reason to become a
| professor: you want to raise the standard of professionals /
| colleagues in the field by mass education. Your goal is to
| increase quality across the board, and the only way to be
| successful is to be a good and engaging communicator. There are
| networked benefits from creating success for your students.
| jdontillman wrote:
| I always thought that a nerdy boutique coffee shop that served
| coffee brewed with heavy water would make for an interesting
| business.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Not mentioned in the piece is that a small fraction of naturally-
| occurring water is "heavy" for a somewhat different reason.
| Oxygen as well as hydrogen has stable isotopes, O17 and O18.
|
| Summary of O16, O17, O18 formation inside massive stars, here:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_oxygen
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| They spent like $1000 to obtain water made from O18, which did
| not have a sweet taste like D2O did.
|
| I wonder if D2O(18) would have any flavor difference...
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| The paper found that O18 doesn't change the taste to sweet like
| deuterium does.
| Bunglebub wrote:
| Taste buds have helped us evolve as humans. In the beginning, the
| sense of taste helped us test the foods we ate: bitter and sour
| tastes might indicate poisonous plants or rotting foods. The back
| of our tongue is sensitive to bitter tastes so we can spit out
| poisonous or spoiled foods before we swallow them. Sweet and
| salty tastes let us know foods were rich in nutrients.
| lurquer wrote:
| There is no correlation between sweet/bitter and
| safe/poisonous.
|
| Many of the most poisonous berries are sweet. Belladonna is
| extremely sweet.
|
| Much of what is bitter (basically every non-sweet plant out
| there) is harmless.
|
| If you judged the safety of food by taste, I'm afraid you
| wouldn't last long in the wild.
| starpilot wrote:
| Oddly today there's an obsession with certain bitter substances
| like caffeine, dark chocolate, and IPA beers.
| genericlogic wrote:
| You mentioned that 'the back of our tongue is sensitive to
| bitter'. I believe this is a myth.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue_map
| tsovlerg wrote:
| Cody's Lab - heavy water taste test:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXHVqId0MQc
|
| TLDR - sweet, has an aftertaste, feels cold on the lips (compared
| to regular water)
| db48x wrote:
| You'll also enjoy Thunderf00t's presentation on the topic:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lANjwPzISQw
|
| It seems that Cody's video inspired the research.
| eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 wrote:
| If anyone hasn't watched Cody's Lab videos yet, do yourself a
| favor and watch some :)
|
| It's a really nice nerd content channel with science of lots of
| different areas!
| claaams wrote:
| Some of his really cool videos I think were taken down
| (making yellowcake, his mining series, surgically implanting
| a magnet into his finger to feel magnetic fields)
| gcanyon wrote:
| My first thought was, "How is this news, Cody already tested
| it?" :-)
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| Nothing is deemed true until academia finally arrives at the
| party.
|
| For example marketing and sales don't exist yet per
| academia's opinion...
| mhh__ wrote:
| Is that a bad thing?
| tanvach wrote:
| Thunderf00t was involved, and he explained how the study was
| carried out really well https://youtu.be/lANjwPzISQw
| aseerdbnarng wrote:
| So is this ability surprising though? As water is essential for
| surival, the ability to taste when water is 'off' would be a
| powerful evolutionary tool. This is maybe why water tastes 'like
| nothing' so we can better tell when there is something wrong with
| it.
| minitoar wrote:
| I always sort of thought it was because we are mostly water.
| goldenkey wrote:
| Yeah, you would adapt to the taste. But what is the taste of
| saliva and mucous? I honestly don't know and now I'm curious
| if it highly varies.
| tomjohnneill wrote:
| Provided you gain appropriate consent, there are definitely
| ways in which you can discover exactly how much the taste
| of these fluids vary from person to person.
| moralestapia wrote:
| From empirical evidence, other people's saliva tastes
| like nothing.
|
| Source: Dating.
| underseacables wrote:
| I always thought that water's taste was its temperature.
| yetihehe wrote:
| It's common meme, but that "taste" is mostly minerals and gases
| dissolved in water. Temperature only changes our response to
| them.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| ThunderF00t is 2nd co-author on this paper. He has a video about
| it that very good.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lANjwPzISQw
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| Thanks for sharing!
| eloff wrote:
| That's really amazing that human taste buds are such sensitive
| chemical detectors. We still can't build anything as good at
| anything near that size.
|
| Off-topic: Is anyone else reminded of that episode of Hogan's
| Heroes where the Germans store heavy water in the POW camp to
| protect it from allied bombers, and Hogan tricks Colonol Klink
| into drinking the heavy water by telling him it had some kind of
| health benefit? https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/584201382887878852/
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Startup selling d2o bottled water in 3 ... 2 ... 1.
| calibas wrote:
| There's a remarkable spectrum of subtle differences in the way
| water tastes. Plastic bottles, metal pipes, using a straw, city
| tap water, spring water, well water, chlorine, filters, they all
| add a little flavor.
|
| In certain cases and depending on the person, human taste and
| smell is an incredibly accurate chemical detector.
| https://www.sciencealert.com/this-woman-can-smell-parkinson-...
| dahfizz wrote:
| Sometimes it is not very subtle. As someone who grew up on well
| water, the chlorine taste of any city water is unbearable to
| me.
| samatman wrote:
| It's not going to be _any_ city water though.
|
| Seattle has fantastic city water. Most months of the year,
| Oakland water is very good (offer not valid for all
| combinations of reservoir and pipes, your mileage may vary).
|
| Also, if you got used to something like iron or calcium
| enrichment, you might just not like those vintages, even if
| they're "objectively" good.
| [deleted]
| fudged71 wrote:
| The tap water where I live in Canada is fantastic. But when
| I'm served filtered water with tap water ice cubes I can tell
| the difference pretty easily.
| Guest42 wrote:
| Well water is fantastic. I can notice the difference city to
| city and have since switched to certain types of bottled
| water. Making ice cubes with bottled water makes drinks taste
| differently.
| xxpor wrote:
| As someone who grew up with well water, it tasted fine, but
| (at least for me based on local conditions), it was a huge
| pain in the ass.
|
| Low pressure, _extremely_ hard to the point where soap is
| useless and we had to replace things regularly from scale
| build up, the UV filter thing we had to run in the
| basement, the worry that one day you could randomly lose
| the prime on the pump and they 'd have to dig to get it
| back (which happened once), no fluoride so my teeth aren't
| the best.
|
| Give me that carbon filtered (removes the chlorine taste)
| city water any day :)
| toast0 wrote:
| Local conditions and probably equipment will make a
| difference in pressure. My well kicks on around 35 psi
| and off around 65, if I'm remembering right. Of course,
| it failed in the past year, no digging required, but it
| did take the better part of a day to pull up the old one,
| and attach a new one and lower it down. Plus one day of
| troubleshooting and a day of waiting for the pump to
| arrive didn't make a fun few days.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Installing a whole-house water softener completely cures
| this and is very cheap (at least in the USA).
| xxpor wrote:
| I've talked to my parents about it multiple times but
| they're worried about the sodium content.
| frob wrote:
| I've been living in a place with a softener on a well for
| a while now. Many people have asked about salty water,
| but I don't find it to be an issue at all. I even prefer
| water from our softened tap over the unsoftened one. I
| don't notice rings or residue in my drinking glasses.
|
| I think a common misconception is that your water runs
| through the salt. In reality, the water runs through a
| filter and the salt water is used to periodically flush
| the accumulated metals out of the filter. This could lead
| to some residual salt, but it will get flushed away
| quickly. The other source of salty water is a busted
| valve. Replace it and the water will be fine again.
| bluGill wrote:
| The salt is used for ion exchange. You trade calcium for
| sodium. So while you don't drink salt, it does have
| sodium.
| xxpor wrote:
| It's not the taste, it's that they're worried about
| sodium in general (high blood pressure).
| zdragnar wrote:
| Potassium chloride water softening salt is more
| expensive, but unless you use _way_ more water than we
| do, I don 't find it to be an unreasonable expense.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...the worry that one day you could randomly lose the
| prime on the pump and they 'd have to dig to get it back
| (which happened once)..._
|
| Where was this? Pumps are placed at the bottom of wells
| and avoid this problem entirely. It's physically
| impossible for a pump placed at the top to raise water
| more than 10m.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| I'll second a reverse osmosis filter. We filter municipal
| water through one to get drinking water and, honestly,
| we're very happy with it. It's not as good as, you know,
| Swiss mountain water, but it's pretty close.
| goda90 wrote:
| If you want to avoid the cost and trash of bottled water,
| try keeping a pitcher of water(or reusable water bottles
| filled from the tap) in your fridge. The chlorine is pretty
| volatile, and will evaporate off within a day(assuming the
| pitcher isn't air tight). Just have some rotating stock so
| you can always have water ready to drink or make ice cubes.
| Of course you could also go the filtration route, but that
| adds the upfront cost of the system, and continuous cost of
| filters and wasted water.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It depends on the treatment method your city uses.
| Chlorine gas will evaporate out, but chloramine won't,
| and will also react with a lot of things downstream to
| make nasty tasting organics, for example if you use the
| water in brewing.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| That is why I have a rain fresh filter. Needs no power to
| run either. http://rainfresh.ca/product/steel-gravity-
| water-filter/
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Looks good for prepping as it takes stream water too.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And can depend on where in a city you are. And sometimes
| the different treatment systems are still mained to
| eachother so shifting demand and supply can change which
| water you're drinking from.
|
| Toronto has chlorine plants and ozone plants.
| ajuc wrote:
| This is common knowledge among people growing potted
| plants to use tap water that stood for a few days in open
| container.
| msrenee wrote:
| Fish keepers too. However it's not recommended in areas
| that use chloramines in addition to chlorine, as those
| are less volatile.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| These variations are why I brew coffee with distilled water
| - gives very consistent joe. Have a distilling machine.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Do you have a recommendation for a countertop distilling
| machine? A back of the napkin calculation shows that it
| would be 50% cheaper for me to pay for the electricity
| and distill water myself than buy bottled water, but the
| idea had never occurred to me.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| While not as good as distilling can I suggest filtering
| like the rain fresh system uses. I have used them for
| decades because well water has too much minerals (bad
| tasting) in this part of Ontario.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Yeah, I grew up on spring water, and going away to college
| and city water was excruciating.
| ksaj wrote:
| Oppositely, I've lived in Toronto for quite a long time, but
| my family all live in rural Ontario. A bunch of years ago my
| parents finally got over the fear factor and came to the city
| to visit.
|
| My dad commented specifically that he was impressed at the
| taste of our tap water, and thought it was an unexpected
| highlight of the trip.
|
| We grew up on well water. Although by this point they were
| living "in town" so it is possible that their water has more
| chlorine, etc, than Toronto's. When I visit them, their tap
| water tastes dull (but not bad) to me, so there is that.
| jfengel wrote:
| The remarkable thing here is that it's not a chemical
| detection, but a nuclear one. Chemically, H2O and D2O are
| identical.
|
| We knew that our taste buds (and smell receptors) are
| incredibly sensitive to small amounts of chemicals. It's
| somewhat unexpected that they could distinguish molecular
| weights.
|
| It may tie in to the Vibrational Theory of Smell:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibration_theory_of_olfaction
|
| The standard theory of odor is that it's a lock-and-key
| process, like the immune system (and related to it). But there
| are some odd holes in that theory, like why sulfur compounds
| smell "alike", even though they're different keys fitting
| different locks (and we can't even exactly say what "alike"
| means).
|
| This one guy suggests that it acts like a spectroscope, sensing
| the way atoms vibrate within the molecule. It's a brilliant
| theory that explains a lot of stuff, except that it's
| completely insane and there's nothing even vaguely like a
| biological mechanism that would enable it to work. He tried
| testing it with molecules that substituted deuterium for
| hydrogen, which alters the spectroscopic signature -- but got
| mixed results.
|
| Smell and taste are only distantly related as mechanisms (taste
| is actually several very different mechanisms, and that's well-
| documented). This suggests that there's even more to it than
| that. Does this bring Luca Turin back? Dunno. He seems to have
| abandoned smell research entirely.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| > Chemically, H2O and D2O are identical.
|
| Deuterium is so much heavier than regular hydrogen that the
| bond lengths in D2O are shortened by enough (~3%) to affect
| cell chemistry. Also significant differences in boiling
| points and other physical properties.
|
| http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/D2O/D2Oh.htm
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| but it isn't a good sanitation or cleanliness detector.
|
| people disagree with any water that tastes different than what
| they are used to and assume its bad. that's pretty much all it
| comes down to.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Hey, whatever you've been drinking hasn't killed you yet.
|
| Really, up until a few generations ago, people tended to stay
| put and a family might drink from the same set of water
| sources for centuries. The only reason water would ever taste
| different is if something bad had happened to it.
| vmception wrote:
| I can understand how it is rational, but its just not
| usually accurate any more
| deckar01 wrote:
| I conducted an experiment once to settle an argument about
| identifying vodka by smell and taste. The argument was since
| regulations require 95+% neutral spirits to be diluted with
| water, the smell and taste should be uniform. We used 3 store
| bought vodkas reportedly made from potato, corn, or grain and
| our own mixtures of 95% grain alcohol with various water
| sources to matching dilution. Participants were allowed to
| sample the solutions and told what they were, then given the
| solutions blind in a random order and asked to identify each
| solution. Our participant group was too small and controls too
| loose to make any significant conclusions, but our guess was
| that pH was not regulated and could be a discerning factor. One
| of the participants scoring a near perfect score settled the
| bet. Even the smokers scored higher than what we expected for
| purely random guesses.
| autokad wrote:
| I'm still having a hard time trying to understand why you
| where surprised they weren't uniform. You can add .0001% of
| something to a food and taste the difference depending on
| what you added.
|
| if someone making a sandwich puts mustard on a sandwich and
| uses that knife to cut my bread, I can taste the mustard even
| though they wiped the knife. the % of mustard on my sandwich
| has to be very, very small.
| deckar01 wrote:
| That's not a very good analogy. It's more like the
| concentration of nitrogen in the atmosphere increasing 5%
| and you being able to smell it. Ethanol is a notoriously
| overwhelming flavor and the rest of vodka is intended to be
| flavorless.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mandliya wrote:
| While growing up in a very dry region in India, I remember people
| get boring wells drilled in their land to extract ground water
| (sometimes even 1000 feet deep). This ground water often tastes
| subtly sweet and I remember drinking that water in summer heat,
| getting this amazing sweet after taste. In fact people go to
| neighbors who have "meetha pani" (sweet water) for their daily
| consumption. Not sure if that was D2O and not H2O.
| istjohn wrote:
| I wonder if the sweetness could have been caused by lead
| leaching into the water.
| enkid wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. The Romans would use lead bowls
| to make their water taste better.
| arthur2e5 wrote:
| It could also be something much more benign like potassium
| and sodium ions. They are allegedly what make some mineral
| water sweet.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| If the well actually was heavy water, you would be happy, since
| heavy water is a few dozen times more valuable than oil per
| liter. If it's a well for drinking water, however,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water#Effect_on_animals
|
| >Experiments with mice, rats, and dogs[42] have shown that a
| degree of 25% deuteration causes (sometimes irreversible)
| sterility, because neither gametes nor zygotes can develop.
| High concentrations of heavy water (90%) rapidly kill fish,
| tadpoles, flatworms, and Drosophila. The only known exception
| is the anhydrobiotic nematode Panagrolaimus superbus, which is
| able to survive and reproduce in 99.9% D2O.[40] Mammals (for
| example, rats) given heavy water to drink die after a week, at
| a time when their body water approaches about 50%
| deuteration.[43] The mode of death appears to be the same as
| that in cytotoxic poisoning (such as chemotherapy) or in acute
| radiation syndrome (though deuterium is not radioactive)
| jebeng wrote:
| I think from ground water trace elements like lead are more
| likely. In my experience when I've been in places where
| groundwater was the household source via electronic pump, it's
| always been a case where you weren't supposed to drink it. And
| either had a reverse osmosis machine near by to use to fill
| bottles, or you just relied on store bought bottled water for
| drinking and cooking.
|
| It would be interesting if in your cases it was high deuterium
| water though. It's not something I ever considered really.
|
| Of course when straight groundwater is your best or only
| option, that's a hell of a lot better than having no source of
| plausibly safe water available. I've drank lake water where we
| would just disinfect it with a few drops of bleach for a couple
| of weeks when on trips. But was always told that this is a
| short term solution for convenience.
| kazinator wrote:
| Please do not give me heavy water without asking. I might not
| have been compiled with CONFIG_D20 support. I can tell you, but
| with small children, you have to check.
| del_operator wrote:
| I've heard similar things with Lithium isotopes being
| differentiated by the brain?
|
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-spin-on-the-quantum-bra...
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