Why distilled water?
Doesn't it seem reasonable that distilled water's lack of electrolytes can be balanced quite easily from other sources? (a quick google search seems to indicate 'yes')
Scientific questions:
1. How much electrolytes are there in a single bite of any particular food, compared to a gallon of water? (anyone have a real number?)
2. How long do electrolytes stay in the body (being usable) after being ingested?
3. How much water will a certain amount use after being ingested. (ie, the difference in electrolytes in distilled vs other sources. Do they even get "used up"?)
4. What is the effects of low electrolytes? (is it pain, body deterioration, something we can feel and detect?)
I am sure I could google this, but I suspect the answers are really hard to find with any true accuracy because they would vary greatly by diet, body size, composition, health, age and many other factors. And I'd argue that it's possible we can tell our electrolyte levels by how we feel? (this seems reasonable)
Edit: Did some research on distilled water, in a previous comment, some interesting finds. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16432024#16449986
Unless you have no other water source, drinking rainwater has never been a practice.
How can you oversimplify something by asking questions?
Doesn't this mean that distilled water re-mineralizes itself? Hard to call it out on not having minerals if it does... So either it's acidic and has minerals, or it's neutral and doesn't. Either way it doesn't seem bad at all and seems self correcting... (which is very interesting)
But is it still safe to drink? Evidently it's still the closest to ph neutral as water can get, says this source at least.
>"According to doctors like Andrew Weil, distilled water is generally as close to a neutral pH as people can get, and it is perfectly safe to drink."
https://www.reference.com/science/ph-distilled-water-7-0-46e...
Carbon dioxide isn't a mineral. When water absorbs CO2 there is an equilibrium reaction where (H2CO3) carbonic acid is produced (the percentage depends on things like the concentration of CO2 and the temperature of the water, among other things).
> But is it still safe to drink?
It's safe to drink, but it's more acidic than normal water (which is slightly alkaline). Not to mention it's missing a bunch of minerals (and things like Fluorine which is a good idea to have) which could negatively impact your health -- there are a lot of minerals your body needs that come from "trivial" sources like tap water or table salt.
> Evidently it's still the closest to ph neutral as water can get, says this source at least.
This doesn't make sense -- if something is acidic you can always add a base (like NaOH) to make it more alkaline (or neutral).
Not to mention that the quoted pH of 5.5 is considered "strongly acidic", as opposed to tap water which is in the 6-8 range that is between "neutral" and "mildly alkaline". Which means that according to their own information, distilled water is not the "closest to pH neutral water can can".
Reference.com isn't a particularly good source either.
Fair enough, my point wasn't clearly stated. It seems the single opposition to distilled water is that it's "acidic".
1.) Do you believe ingesting anything slightly acidic is inherently bad? (is distilled water worse than fruit juice?)
2.) Is there more carbonic acid in distilled water vs soda water or coke/pepsi?
I would certainly agree that Reference.com is not a good source. My father is a chemist, he's the one who brought home the distilled water we all drank from as our daily drinking water my entire childhood... he didn't seem to think it was an issue.
> 1.) Do you believe ingesting anything slightly acidic is inherently bad? (is distilled water worse than fruit juice?)
Fruit juice has its own problems, but no. Our bodies have several buffers[1] that mean your blood pH (and other fluids) remain the same even if you add acidic or alkaline chemicals to it. This is required for enzymes in your body to function normally because they stop working outside very strict pH regions. (Of course this is a massive over-generalisation of the human body, and acidity can cause problem with people who have acid reflux or other stomach issues.)
In short, I agree that drinking something slightly acidic is generally as safe as something slightly alkaline (and a lot of the recent "take in more alkaline stuff" health trends are really stupid). My point was that (by the data given in the source you linked) that distilled water isn't "closer to neutral water" than tap water -- it's more acidic than tap water is alkaline.
> 2.) Is there more carbonic acid in distilled water vs soda water or coke/pepsi?
No, because soft drinks are carbonated (more dissolved CO2, more carbonic acid). If you made them flat it might be about the same (though there's plenty of other acidic crap in soft drinks).
> My father is a chemist [...] he didn't seem to think it was an issue.
Well, maybe he didn't know of or consider the importance of minerals. The point isn't that distilled water will kill your or anything, it's just that drinking nothing but distilled water (when you have access to clean tap water) is not a great idea because you're missing out on a several minerals that you now have to get from elsewhere.