Distilled Water...

Years ago, my friend's parents had a cheap Sears water distiller. They told me distilled water was the best, most healthy, water a person could drink. So... I bought one these units. I only had to use it once. The scale and urine smelling-looking yellow liquid left in the tank after distilling my own tap water convinced me that tap water is not for me. This is Murray tap water I'm talking about, which has a reputation for being pretty good water in this valley. As you all know by now, if you've been keeping up with the blog, I was boiling a lot of water to cook my beloved spaghetti. And scrubbing the little white dots off the bottom of the pot and the white ring from around the inside of the pot wasn't fun. But when I started boiling distilled water for my pasta, cool!, that became a thing of the past. Besides the disgusting crap in the bottom of the tank, this became another reason never to consume tap water. I've become a little bit of a water snob. I do drink tap water though, if it's offered to me at friend's houses because people get really offended if they think I think their water isn't good enough for me. Most of the time I tell them no thank you, I'm not thirsty.

Eventually distilling my own water became a royal pain in the ass. It took hours, it was loud and used a ton of electricity. The process took 5 or 6 hours and the resulting water was very hot and had to be cooled in the fridge before consuming it and it took lots of electricity and that tank was worse to clean than my spaghetti pot. I started buying my water at the grocery store and hauling it up the stairs to my condo. Carrying a 5 gallon water bottle up three flights isn't easy, but I did it anyway! To this day, I still buy my drinking water at the grocery store.

Glacier is name of the company that sells the reverse osmosis, ultra violet light, yada yada refillable water in the Albertson's and Smith's grocery stores. I don't know why I was looking for the Glacier water company online, but that Google search led me to a company of a similar name, but unrelated, that sells home water distiller units. If I had an extra thousand dollars laying around with nothing better to do, I'd buy one of these machines in a heart beat! The cool thing about these machines is they are the only water cooled distiller available on the market, which means they are quiet and take less electricity. All other distillers use air to cool the water, hence the noise and high electricity usage. Plus these machines are self cleaning (well, you do have to scale the machine once a year, twice if you have very bad tap water) but the woman I talked to in Lehi who has one of these machines, says that process isn't a big deal. They are small, they fit under most kitchen sinks, they are quiet and you have 10 gallons of distilled water per day, always available, and it can be hooked up to your refrigerator's water dispenser or ice maker or to a special spigot at the sink. You can have hot water on demand too, depending on your preferences. Its operation is automatic, the machine distills more water as water is used.

One question Joy asked was, but isn't distilled water bad for you? I come across this question too in my research. According to Dr. Andrew Weil, this is a myth perpetuated by the Internet, and companies selling water filters. Dr. Weil is fairly well known health and wellness expert, he's been on the Oprah show a bunch of times, written a bunch of books, he's a real M.D. and he makes a lot sense to me in what he preaches. He says, yes, distilling water does remove minerals but no one is certain the body can readily absorb minerals from water. He says, "We get our minerals from food, not water. By one manufacturer's estimate, you would have to drink 676 eight-ounce glasses of water to reach the RDA for calcium."

According to the Glacier people who want you to buy their Glacier machine, the answer is: "No, quite the opposite. If inorganic minerals (and other substances like chlorine, heavy metals, bacteria, etc.) are removed from tap water, by converting it into pure distilled water, the result is improved absorption of all nutrients, including minerals, and improved elimination of wastes at the cellular level. Well, that sounds like what we are trying to accomplish by going raw.

Here is the link to the FAQ at Glacier Water Treatment Systems:

http://www.distilledwater.ca/faq.html

At the bottom of the page are the links to Dr. Andrew Weil's newsletter PDF. You need an Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it.

Ask Dr. Weil - Is Distilled Water Dangerous?
He explains this answer so much better than I can paraphrase it, I highly recommend for you to click below.

http://www.distilledwater.ca/Is%20Distilled%20Water%20Safe.pdf

This post isn't a reflection of all that I've read and learned about distilled water, but this is where I ended up, this is where I landed on the issue. I always welcome contrasting points of view, challenges to my opinions and so on. So if anyone has any other info on this subject, or deeper research or better more reliable resources, please do share.