why does bottled water taste different to tap water?
In: Chemistry
Bottled water is more pure than tap water. Tap water will have all kinds of minerals, giving it a certain flavor
Edit: this isnt entirely true. Bottled water just has a different set of minerals to tap water, because it’s designed to taste good.
Mineral content and other additives.
The first rule of water is that water doesn’t have a taste. This is a surprising statement since all water tasted differently. Fiji water is different from Poland Springs which are both different from tap water, so obviously water must have a taste… right? Pure water with nothing in it even has a taste, doesn’t it?
Well… our tongues have nothing to “taste” water with. It turns out that nothing in pure water activates our taste buds. So water itself can’t actually have a taste (to us, at least) because we have no way of transmitting any flavor signals through our tongue with it.
What we *do* taste is the way water interacts with the flavors in our mouth. Inside your mouth is a complex array of flavors, whether from micro food particles we’ve eaten recently, bacteria build up, or other related things floating around.
Water changes the composition of our mouth environment. Suddenly the salts and sugars are diluted, the acids and bases washed away. The taste we experience, in this situation, is the chemicals and minerals touching our tongue being rearranged into new ratios. It might be sweeter all of a sudden so the water “tastes” sweet. Remember though, pure water has no flavor. You’re just tasting the changes in your mouth.
Most water (all natural water sources and most bottled water) is not pure though! Most water has minerals in it, which we can taste. So water with carbon dioxide, carbonated water, will taste bitter plain because carbon dioxide is bitter. Water with other minerals will taste a little bit like whatever minerals are in it. The water is still changing your mouth environment too, so you’re tasting the interplay between minerals in the water and how they interact with your mouth flavor.
Tap water is treated with various things in various places. It might be fluoridated, giving it a unique flavor, or be very mineral heavy giving it a strange tang.
Bottled water is usually “purified” or “distilled” (and often is just blended with quality tap water somewhere along the way), which reduces its mineral composition or otherwise changes the ratio. It usually has a low mineral/additive content compared to tap, which lends a “purer” taste (as we think of it).
# In short
The flavor of water is the flavor of your mouth chemistry and whatever minerals/additives are in the water. Bottled water has a different composition than tap water, which causes them to taste very different.
# ELI5
Imagine you have a cake. The cake will taste different if you add lemon instead of lime, but it’s still cake. The difference is what’s in the cake!
Because bottled water is designed to taste good. Pure water, which you can purchase (distilled water) doesn’t taste very good. We like to have water with some minerals in it. Not coincidentally, the most pure tasting water is water that matches the mineral content of our own saliva.
Most bottled water companies purify their water and then add minerals until it has the “proper” amount for their brand.
*All* water tastes different depending on its source and if/how it’s been treated or purified. Evian water tastes different from FIJI water, despite the fact that they’re both bottled, because their sources have different mineral contents. Some bottled water is just treated tap water. Tap water also tastes different from different places because not only does the water have different mineral contents, but tap water is also usually treated with chlorine and/or fluorine, and might pick up a taste from that.
I sometimes refill water bottles with tap water, and I swear the water tastes more like bottled water than tap the next day. Just psychological?
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