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It could be wasteful if hooked up to the whole house, but it's unlikely an under-sink reverse osmosis system will have a meaningful impact on your water consumption. Accurately identifying where to implement it matters.

If you have hard water, I suggest a whole-house water softener and reserve reverse osmosis for the kitchen.

Re: remineralization. Ick, I just skip these. They taste awful to me.

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Is drinking de-mineralised water from RO not bad for you? I'd always heard it leeches minerals out of you.

Not a significant concern because it's what your digestive system is designed for. Pulling out the materials it needs from a slurry.

Deinionized water on the other hand immediately chemically to pull in ions. So same action, but with a more powerful mechanism. You'd probably have to drink a lot of deionized water to cause issues, plus water reionizes pretty quickly in air, and it takes terrible.

There is no consensus [1] except that exclusively drinking demineralized water could cause issues. So like everything moderation matters. I only use it for drinking water not cooking for example.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4223198/

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