Mineral water, a drink that is shipped all over the developed world, has, naturally, water as it's primary ingredient.
Identical distilled water can be produced pretty much anywhere, but is not particularly pleasant to drink.
Surely it would make environmental and economic sense to remove as much water as possible from mineral water before shipping it, and then dilute it at it's destination?
Taken to it's logical conclusion, this would mean that mineral water could be available in powdered, and highly concentrated form, and shipped all over the globe. Mineral water from say, the Rocky Mountains and the Alps would have slightly differing mineral contents, and could be enjoyed in faraway continents at a minimal price.
Furthermore, chemical compositions of different waters could be analysed, and then manufactured, removing the need to build roads for large trucks to trundle to and from areas that are often of oustanding natural beauty.
This would make it possible to recreate mineral waters from remote areas such as the Andes or the Himalayas, hugely increasing the range of possible mineral waters available to the consumer.
[Sep 2001] Thanks for resurrecting this, Jutta. I'm greatly impressed with your archiving. Unfortunately the subsequent notes have been reduced to powder form, so I'll try to rehydrate a couple from memory, though I'm afraid I can't remember who said them:
Negative points included the cost of producing distilled water, and the possible difficulties of recombining it with a powder, which is composed of hard minerals.
A positive application suggested, was to use these water kits when homebrewing wine and (especially) beer, where the content of the water greatly affects the brewing and flavour of the finished product.-- Lemon, Jul 03 2000 coke's bottler water http://www.dasani.comclick on "understanding dasani" [mihali, Jul 03 2000, last modified Oct 05 2004] don't people (not me - I don't get the point and just drink tap water) buy spring water because it is 'natural' artificial mineral water may not sell quite so well... I like this idea though so I think I will vote for it...-- RobertKidney, Sep 06 2001 // artificial mineral water may not sell quite so well //
robert: coke's version of bottled water is exactly that, and it's supposedly selling fairly well. they take tap water, filter it through reverse-osmosis, and add minerals to it to create "re-mineralised" water. see link.-- mihali, Sep 06 2001 I like Dasani. Dunno what it is about it, but I do like it. Competitive with 'natural' water, and is good. I discovered once that one brand of 'natural spring water' available locally had 'From the community source, <mumble> Georgia' on it...so they did pretty much the same thing.
Never understood why people buy water softeners and complain about hard water, then pay extra for Evian. Possibly because it's 'naive' spelled backward...-- StarChaser, Sep 08 2001 <grin> Yes, it's an old pun, but I actually came up with it before I heard it anywhere. We'd gone somewhere outside and the only available water was naivE...the four of us managed one sip apiece and the general consensus was that it would be better to suck on a rock...it'd taste the same, and cost less...-- StarChaser, Sep 09 2001 ...now THAT's funny!-- iuvare, Sep 09 2001 // Identical distilled water can be produced pretty much anywhere, but is not particularly pleasant to drink //
Ah, but you must have been drinking the cheap stuff. You want to try triply distilled water (or MilliQ filtered), which is quite possibly the purest water available to humanity. And it tastes fine. I can also recommend 99.999% ethanol and MilliQ in a 50:50 mix: "natural" vodka.-- lubbit, Sep 09 2001 If you have powdered water, what would you add to it?-- fugazi, Aug 16 2003 drinking very pure water, ie. deionized, is thought to be injurious to one's health. instead prepare a sintered frit consisting of the most desirable elements and pass distilled water slowly thru the frit. the amount of dissolved material will be proportional to the contact time.-- paulboc, Feb 28 2004 To get a pH of 8.5 to 11 there has to be some alkalinity, trace minerals, added to water. I get my chelated minerals in my all vegetarian source/maca, meal replacement drink.-- mensmaximus, May 04 2005 With Dasani around, this invention more or less loses it's purpose. You'd still have to carry distilled water home, but now you also have to carry powder. Unless you have a magical powder you can add to tap water, there's no real savings here.-- Worldgineer, May 04 2005 random, halfbakery