How much trace minerals do we actually get from water? I just read something interesting on Amazon. I'll remove if linking is not allowed.
http://www.amazon.com/review/RQ51BP7...wasThisHelpful
By bektek:
"Great job on helpful tips for installing the system! I have to disagree, however, with adding back trace minerals, which could be confusing/expensive/unnecessary/potentially dangerous for the uninitiated. Because of the great disparity in the different theories about how our bodies have evolved over time (think creationism to evolutionary theory, with everything in between, filtered through the constant fun house filter that is the popular media) and their food and water requirements, it would be hard to say for sure exactly what "our bodies were meant to get..." From a purely biological standpoint, the cleaner the water, the better the inter and intracellular transport mechanisms are able to work. While it is true that our bodies need essential minerals, the vast majority of them come from the foods we eat, while only an extremely small percentage of them typically come from the water we drink. If you look at the mineral content of a "typical" bottle of spring water, which might most closely approximate what our early ancestors drank before virtually all of the sources of pure water were contaminated, you would have to drink hundreds of bottles, sometimes thousands, to even come close to the recommended daily allowance (RDA) figures for a given mineral. Even "mineral" waters, (i.e. San Pellegrino, etc.) which often contain 1000 ppm or more of certain sodium components, won't provide you with the quantity and spectrum of minerals you'll get from a healthy diet. Coca-cola, which markets the purified water product Dasani, (purified by a reverse osmosis process not unlike this unit being sold) adds small amounts of minerals back after the purification process, not for nutritional reasons (although it doesn't hurt sales if a lot of people think that), but for taste reasons, even though most people can't pick different types of bottled waters out during blindfolded taste tests. Some people believe that "purified" water has an astringent or bitter taste, and it's those people that Coke is marketing to by adding back minerals "for taste." It's subjective, and therefore hard to prove. By contrast, Dasani's rival product Aquafina, produced by Pepsi, also a reverse osmosis-purified water, does not NOT back minerals for taste, (although to qualify, I haven't looked at an Aquafina label lately, maybe they are now...) like most the dozens of store-brand purified waters on the market today. They're not concerned with losing that slim cross-section of people thirsting for the "taste minerals." It's also generally considered a myth among water quality professionals (that's me) that drinking purified water will leach essential minerals from your body. The faulty reasoning is that because purified water has been stripped of most of it's dissolved solids content (i.e. minerals) that areas of greater concentration of those minerals (as in a cell) will give up some of the minerals to the area of lesser concentration (i.e. the purified water). While this is generally true in non-living systems (it's called osmosis), it just doesn't happen in the human body, because there are other complex chemical processes happening that cause that cell to hang on to the minerals it needs, even though there is purified water lurking about. Maybe someone erroneously made a connection along the way between someone drinking purified water but otherwise being severely malnourished from a food standpoint, or having some other condition. Purified water, and lots of it, is by far the best thing you can do for your body, besides eating a well-balanced diet and having the occasional glass of something a little stronger than water to soothe the soul and enhance the antioxidant levels. Cheers!"
