Lots of filters don’t filter out the bad stuff. Water bottles have micro plastics and I’ve heard reverse osmosis is bad. I’m just kinda stuck and at not sure what to believe.
Depends where you live. Locally it’s from an aquifer, so delicious spring water comes out of the tap. At home reverse osmosis filters are reasonably priced. You can also buy RO water at most grocery stores. Spring water is also good. To can usually find water delivery services that use better quality plastic 5 gallon jugs. Or fill them yourself at a grocery store.
In some places I’ve seen people travel to local spring heads and fill up jugs for free(minus fuel costs).
I’m not sure what you heard about RO being bad. Distilled water shouldn’t be used for drinking due to high polarity and that it can leech minerals from your body.
I know this is a nutrition sub and many of us are looking for ways to clean up our health, but we also need to let ourselves relax and accept that this is a dirty-ass world we live in and some ickies are gonna sneak into our bodies. Tap water is fine and microplastics are everywhere. Not much you can do about that now.
Edit: I just want to clarify that you can put whatever you feel comfortable with into your body, but if you find you have a habit of overanalyzing the pros and cons of the many options available to you of everything you consume or buy, you may want to take it down a notch. Hypochondria can be much worse for your health than many of the things we consume. I don’t mean to assume you have this problem OP, but I figure many of us in this sub have suffered from it at some point or to some extent.
reverse osmosis isn’t “bad”. it just removes a ton of beneficial minerals along with the bad stuff. if you eat a variety of foods and meet your nutritional requirements there, you won’t need the extra minerals found in water. worst case scenario, just pop a cheap multivitamin few times a week.
almost all middle and upper class families in india have RO+UV water filters because tap water quality is not reliable.
I use the zero water filter. I use the pitcher that’s small enough to fit in my fridge. It’s more expensive than Brita and other brands but where I live the water sucks and it’s the only filter that the water doesn’t have a bad taste. It comes with a meter so you can see how much stuff is in the water before and after filtering it.
Tap water is the worst. I’ve analyzed the yearly Water Reports and really should dissect one for everyone because it’s really ridiculous once you understand the information they give you. First, they use lots of charts and little sections of text and it looks really overwhelming and confusing until you see the information is really basic, the repeat themselves numerous times to fill space in the pamphlet, they test most chemicals once a year - except Fluoride - they test multiple times with more strict measures but tell you that it’s very safe (then why monitor it so much but no other toxic chemicals/ minerals?) and that it prevents cavities.. So since when did the gov and higher ups care about our teeth?!?! Since they put such high levels into our water!! Not to mention, when levels of anything get too high and can’t be controlled, like radiation for instance, then they just raise the safe level and tell the public that everything is fine. People need to realize that we’re inundated with heavy metals and toxic chemicals - and now a lot are unidentified, in the air, food, water, everywhere. All we can do is try to be as healthy as possible while we navigate these too late situations we’ve been dealt. And btw we use a ProOne canister filter and when I want more of those good tasting minerals, I’ll get some Alkaline water. Just doing my best here..
The tap water in the town we live in literally smells like bleach, and I’ve never tasted bleach so I can not say that it tastes like it, but it tastes just awful. We have a berkey water filter and absolutely love it and I would now never spend my money on anything else. We’ve tried zero, pur and Brita and they pale in comparison to the berkey.
You’re getting no reasonable answers, sorry I can’t help either but would love to know as well. Our water isn’t ok, it is killing us and I know it’s a dirty ass world but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to be healthier than the people who willingly accept and don’t try to optimize what they can. I think reverse osmosis with remineraliZed post ro process is best but it’s costly and more semi regularly maintenance than we would like. Not sure what the reasonable cost answer is here until there is a larger global concern about it :(
Surprised at the amount of complacency and acceptance there is of sub optimal drinking water on a nutrition sub!
I use a brita filter but would like to know if there is a better / more effective / even healthier way of further purifying my tap water.
If anyone has any suggestions, other than “ah I’m sure tap water isn’t thaaat bad compared to everything else” I’m all ears, thank you in advance 🙏
Theres a device in your house, called a sink. You can run water from it. You should try it sometime and stop worrying so much about little shit that you can’t control. You know all water has microplastics in it right? No matter what you do, you can’t stop it. Just drink normal tap water and stop freaking out over little stuff
idk how but my filters filter out pretty much every bad stuff and dont cost much at all
ive also tested them cuz my tap water is yellow occasionally (1-3 times a week) and filtered the yellow water and made clearn no color no taste water out of it
Im from the netherlands and we litterlay have some of the best tap water on the planet, for its price.
Belgiums tap water is 3x as expensive and tastes like shit.
Some kind of filter is probably whats best, either a small device or some kind of house filter, depending on your budget
Nothing wrong with RO water, and if your want more minerals back in, either get one that does that (like ours) or simply add which trace minerals you want back in. Also know that some municipal tap waters may not have some of the trace minerals you want anyway. You’ll hear BS about water waste from RO filters, but most are just filter tap in your kitchen for drinking water so you aren’t filtering your entire water use, that would be silly. My wife and I probably drink about a gallon or so each, each day. So you only waste about that much, which is about 1 or at most 2 toilet flushes a day. If that waste concerns you, just don’t flush it every time you pee, and you’ll easily save that amount of water or more.
And you’ll also see BS about RO or distilled water sucking minerals out of your bones, that’s 100% BS. The only “dangerous “ water to drink is laboratory grade de-ionized water, and even that would be ok in small amounts (but why would you?). Filter setups can be expensive, $200-500 USD, and you’ll need to replace filters every 2 yrs or so depending on use.
The best would be great well or natural spring water, but most of us live in developed areas where our houses water systems are on whatever municipal sources, with chlorine, fluoride, and whatever else is in the water. Some areas are better than other. I remember Washington DC water quite literally smelled and tasted like you dipped your cup in a local swimming pool, horrible!
There’s lots of options out there, decide what level you want and what you can afford.
personally i have a water distiller , i drink mostly distilled water. have been doing this for 2 years (i drink about 1 gallon a day) and ive experienced zero bad effects from drinking distilled only, if anything i feel way better lol
Your best bet is to remove everything and add back what you want. An RO filter is very effective at removing just about everything. You can either remineralize with drops or add an alkaline filter post-RO. I personally use a six stage filter with UV and alkaline as well. I’m always adding various minerals through lemons, tea, coffee, etc. If you eat enough veggies, mineral deficiency should not be an issue.
We have terrible municipal water and use a whole house carbon filter, water softener, and RO for drinking and cooking water. Our under sink RO unit is considered “high efficiency” and claims not to produce as much waste water as I saw in a different comment. I believe the documentation for it was 1 gal of waste per gal of filtered. We also have a remineralization cartridge it flows through post RO membrane before it comes out of the tap.
My thought on this is the small amount of waste water we generate per day filtering our drinking and cooking water is much better than adding plastic to the already overburdened refuse/recycling stream. The waste water will be treated and returned to the local rivers and we aren’t adding chemicals or other pollutants to it.
We use tap water with an activated charcoal filter in a glass pitcher. Same type of filtration as a Brita filter, but no plastic involved. We store it in the fridge so it’s also a way for us to keep cold water on hand because we don’t have a fridge with a water dispenser.