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Comment by p1esk | Hacker News Reader

pure distilled water is bad for you

No, it’s not. I’ve been drinking it exclusively for the last ~20 years and have no health issues.

Exactly. It's water. It's not bleach. If you take a multivitamin and eat a varied diet, there is no "magic" nutritional value lost. Water doesn't have to come out of a Voss water bottle or the ground to be "healthy".

> If you take a multivitamin and eat a varied diet, there is no "magic" nutritional value lost.

So you're substituting in the lost minerals from other sources. I don't see how that detracts from my (rather weak) argument

Why do you seem to feel so strongly about distilled water?

Because your statement is demonstrably false and people here are nothing if not pedantic.

I don't know what's so demonstrably false about it; there is credible evidence (cited in another comment) suggesting mineral/electrolyte loss from drinking demineralized water and GGP admits to purposefully consuming nutrients from other sources to compensate. That only helps to prove my point?

If you have to compensate from other sources than I don't understand how something is necessarily harmless, without the qualifier that it should only be used in the context of a proper diet (which many/most don't have, particularly the types that might be susceptible to quack wellness claims)

Besides, one anecdote does not a disproven theory make

Yes, you are correct. If you consume only distilled water, you will get sick. This of course means not eating or drinking anything else.

But it should be obvious that your mineralisation is not on a knife-edge. The tiny amount of minerals lost by drinking distilled water is massively made up in the other stuff you eat and drink.

Yes, you are correct. If you consume only distilled water, you will get sick.

No, this is not proven. To prove this, we must demonstrate that a person who only drinks distilled water would get sick sooner than the same person who only drinks tap water - in exactly the same conditions.

Clearly this experiment would be very hard to perform. But if someone did perform it, I'd love to hear about it.

Something needs to do harm in order to be harmful. If I drink a bottle of distilled water a day, I am healthier (better hydrated) than if I do not drink that bottle. That is the opposite of harmful. Replacing tap water or bottled water with distilled is nominally harmful, but because you stopped drinking the mineralized water, not because you started drinking distilled. And yes, no one is saying that not drinking water is not harmful.

This just seems like such a bizarre and indefensible hill to die on.

Out of curiosity: Why?

Because after you drink distilled water, tap water and most bottled water smell and taste bad.

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