There is a rumor going around that drinking purified water can lead to nutrient deficiencies and damage your health because it lacks micronutrients, is this really true? If you believe it, would you believe someone who said, "Eating bananas is bad for your health because they don't contain carotenoids"?
Pure water lacks essential minerals, that's true, but drinking water is for hydration, not for nutrition. The nutrients your body needs can be consumed through other foods, and other meals, fruits and vegetables are far richer in nutrients than drinking water.
There are many sources of drinking water for human beings. As people living in cities, drinking water mainly comes from tap water and bottled water, which are processed and need to pass strict drinking water hygiene standards, it is hard to imagine that a kind of water harmful to human beings will exist on the market for a long time.
The so-called pure water is harmful, must be a rumor.
The water from the city's waterworks is sterilized and will meet drinking water standards when it leaves the plant. But if the pipeline is in disrepair, it may lead to secondary pollution of the water. However, boiling water can kill most of the bacteria and viruses in the water, so it is generally safe to drink or cook with tap water.
Pure water, prepared by reverse osmosis or distillation, is water that has had most of its impurities removed. This type of water is clean enough to be suitable for drinking and is very safe to use as drinking water.
In fact, the Middle East and developed countries in Europe and the United States have been drinking purified water for decades, and the prevalence rate of purified water has reached more than 80%, but no one has ever gotten sick from drinking purified water. Bottled water, generally mineral water, mineral water and pure water (reverse osmosis water or distilled water) and so on.
Mineral water is generally taken from the natural water source containing a variety of minerals, after sterilization and processing and qualified by the test, the human body should be safe. But because the effect of any substance on the human body needs to be considered not only in terms of its composition, but also in terms of its total intake, it is not really clear how much value the minerals in mineral water will bring to our health.
Mineral-added water is generally made from city tap water, which is then purified, minerals added, sterilized and bottled. In other words, the so-called mineral water is tap water processed into pure water, and then added some potassium chloride and other food additives and blended out. As different enterprises add minerals and different content, if you add too much, or long-term drinking a lot of this so-called mineral water containing additives, it is likely to constitute an adverse effect on health. The reporter received a WeChat: "Pure water not only does not contain any trace elements, and all the life ions in the water to nourish the human body is also removed, this water, the more you drink the more acidic body fluids ......"
The University of Hong Kong, Professor of the School of Biological Sciences, Wong Ming-fu said that Pure water refers to the use of filtration, heating, distillation and other ways to purify the water, does not contain additives, can be consumed directly. According to the purification method, pure water is divided into different types, for example, reverse osmosis filtration is filtered water, heating and distillation is distilled water. The reverse osmosis treatment of filtered water contains a small amount of trace elements needed by the human body, the high temperature treatment of distilled water is basically no longer contain.
Lu Qing, an associate professor at the School of Public **** Health, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said that pure water does not contain any trace elements, but only through the treatment, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium and other essential minerals significantly reduced.
Lu Qing introduced, the normal pH value of human body fluids between 7.35-7.45, although the body in the continuous production and intake of acid and alkali substances, but the pH value of body fluids does not change significantly. This is because on the one hand, human body fluids are a buffer system, the pH value is less affected by the outside world; on the other hand, the regulation of the lungs and kidneys will alleviate the significant changes in pH value. Drinking pure water for a long time does not cause body fluids to become more and more acidic.
Wu Zhigang, a professor at the Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, said that pure water is neutral or weakly acidic, and that it does not change the pH of organs and tissues after acid regulation by gastric juices and absorption in the intestines. "For the human body, essentially drinking water is replenishing H2O."
Xu Guoxun, a professor at the Department of Environmental Engineering at the Shanghai University of Technology, said, "I don't agree with the 'life ion' argument. Food contains the nutrient elements needed by the body, and water mainly provides the body fluids needed by the body."
The widely circulated WeChat also has a point of view: because of the pure water mineral salt content and hardness are close to zero, in a "hungry" state, with a strong ability to dissolve, drinking pure water not only can not bring nutrients, on the contrary, it will also be part of the body's nutrients will be dissolved, and discharged from the body.
In this regard, Zhong Kai said: "Nutritional elements are not water on the dash, people are not sieve, which is so simple."
"Drinking pure water does not have any 'lack of nutrition' problem. China's large-scale promotion of drinking pure water has been more than a decade, did not find any cases of adverse reactions after drinking pure water." Gu Jiuzhuan said.
Zhong Kai said that some people believe that drinking pure water will de-calcify and lead to osteoporosis, which is a lack of understanding of human physiology. "The concentration of ions in human body fluids is relatively balanced, and calcium ions are no exception. A 60-kilogram adult has 36-42 kilograms of body fluids, and the amount of water consumed in a day is only 2 liters, how much effect can it have on the concentration of calcium ions? The main cause of calcium loss is age, hormone levels and dietary intake, bone calcium deposition is not like the dirt on the clothes, soap rubbing is gone." There are many rumors circulating on the Internet claiming that pure water is very harmful to the human body, and citing a variety of so-called evidence, such as a rumor titled "tap water scare" continues to spread in the WeChat circle of friends, the rumor claimed that "a couple in Shanghai gave birth to a baby boy, the child has been drinking pure water, 3 years later got chondroplasia, and the IQ does not develop. Authoritative experts said that pure water was the cause of the problem. Since then, the Shanghai Municipal Government has emphasized that all primary and secondary school students are prohibited from drinking pure water.
But after investigation, Shanghai did regulate the city's primary and secondary schools campus drinking water supply model, but there is no ban on drinking pure water, and from a medical point of view, drinking pure water and chondromalacia does not have any relationship.
Some people say that pure water has no minerals, will dissolve the body's trace elements and discharge, is not conducive to health; there are also said to drink pure water will lead to decalcification and osteoporosis. These, are the ignorance of human physiology.
In fact, the ionic concentration of human body fluids has a balancing mechanism, and, the body fluids of adults have dozens of kilograms, and the amount of water consumed in a day is only 1 - 2 liters, which has a very small impact on the ionic concentration of the body. Even if there is a slight effect, it may only be about the same as eating a few less mouthfuls of vegetables, so there is no need to worry too much.
So, why are these rumors like the "undefeatable" ones that keep coming back despite the scientists' efforts to dispel them?
There is a profound reason.
The originators and advocates of such rumors are often inextricably linked to the production or sale of mineral water, mineral water, or other water-related products, such as the domestic rumor that pure water is harmful to a mineral water manufacturer from more than a decade ago, the start of the malicious attacks on pure water.
Additionally, fear fuels the spread of rumors. The nation has long lacked confidence in its food hygiene environment, so when these rumors are spread using horror claims, they can easily appeal to people's inner anxieties and seem to be able to soothe their own insecurities by believing in such false 'truths'. Rumors are rarely positive and upbeat because we are naturally more inclined to spread negative news.
Rumor expert Nicholas DiFonzo explains, "People have always managed to control their inner fears by spreading rumors."
Rumors stop with the wise. Continuously improving their scientific literacy, insisting on independent thinking, and not blindly believing in rumors and spreading them are what makes a knowledgeable youth in the new era.
On the question of whether pure water is harmful to the body, the Health Law and Supervision Department of the Ministry of Health said in a letter to the China Beverage Industry Association that pure water "is safe, hygienic and harmless".
Shanghai, a newspaper has often drink pure water to endanger the health of a generation as the topic, talking about the various hazards of pure water, while several other influential newspapers published pure water is not only harmless, and health benefits, you can rest assured to drink, causing a moment of controversy. CCTV's "Life" program conducted a consumer survey, and visited the national authorities and authoritative experts, in her special report to the majority of consumers a fair and objective statement.
According to expert statistics, a cup of milk contains calcium equal to 200 cups of mineral water containing calcium, eat a piece of meat containing iron equal to 8200 cups of mineral water containing iron. Nutrition experts pointed out that the human body needs a variety of nutrients, including minerals, trace elements, should be extracted from food, rely on water to supplement nutrition, is tantamount to a drop in the bucket.
Experts said: In fact, drinking water on the water requirements is pure water quality or not. Experts, to the mid-1990s, in Europe and the United States, Japan, Southeast Asia and other countries, the penetration rate of pure water has reached more than 80%, the Middle East is almost 100%, in China's Hong Kong region, 2/3 of the young people drink pure water, and the above countries and regions, so far the end of the drinking of pure water and lead to a variety of diseases reported. In order to standardize our market, the State Bureau of Technical Supervision will soon introduce a national standard for pure water.
Hao Yu, secretary-general of the National Technical Committee for Standardization of the Food Industry, said: "If drinking pure water itself is harmful to the body, then the Ministry of Health, the State Bureau of Technical Supervision will not set national standards, not only can not set national standards, but also to stop the production and sale.
Professor Yu Geng, director of the Clinical Society of China Nutrition Society, said: The main role of water is to transport nutrients in the body, to promote the metabolism of some nutrients digestion. On the other hand, the body's metabolic wastes out of the body. Water involved in our body's metabolism, far more than the role of water as a nutrient to provide nutrients. If our drinking water is pure, naturally we can retain the minerals and trace elements in it, but there are too many safety hazards in tap water, for the sake of the 1% of beneficial substances in the middle, you have to drink into the 99% of potentially harmful substances is not a little bit more than worth it? There are more and more users of purified water at home and abroad (according to a survey conducted by Sina.com in April 2006, about 20% of Chinese people drink purified water). With the improvement of people's living standard, the consumption of high-energy and refined food is gradually increasing, and the quality of minerals in food is decreasing; magnesium is the main cation in human cells, and it is an essential substance for a variety of basic cellular biochemical reactions in the body, and it participates in physiological functions such as calcium regulation, cellular enzyme reactions, and neuromuscular excitability. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the effects of drinking pure water on human health under low-mineral dietary conditions. It has been reported that dietary intake of magnesium alone is not sufficient to establish normal blood magnesium concentrations to prevent different diseases. The body's intake of magnesium mainly includes food and drinking water, of which about 1/3 of magnesium comes from drinking water, and the magnesium in drinking water behaves as a water-soluble ion, which is more readily absorbed than magnesium in food.
Microfiltration mode of mineral water and tap water high-temperature heating to boiling sterilization of the general daily drinking water are contained in the composition of a moderate amount of minerals.
The former compared to the commercialization of the market, there are, for example, barrels of mineral water with a water dispenser applicable, small bottles of canned mineral water and other products, with easy to carry, small size, a variety of mineral content is more comprehensive, but the sustained supply of poorer characteristics.
The latter is mostly reflected in the civilian water pipeline water supply with the kettle heating, public water boiler heating and other popularity of a wider range of characteristics.