On the back of my water bottle, a label states that there is both sodium and chloride, along with some other stuff. What are these things, why do they matter, and how come my water isn’t salty?

Question

I’ve been wondering this all my life. Please help.

EDIT: I FEEL SO MUCH SMARTER NOW, THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ENLIGHTENING ME!

In: 2

Answer 1

If there is no salt in the water, you won’t like the taste. You can buy this at the grocery store, it’s called triple distilled water.

If there is a little salt and minerals, the water tastes good.

If there is a ton of salt or minerals, the water tastes salty or “hard”.

Answer 2

So, they are forced legally to disclose those, because those are in the water, but in short, in most tap or bottled water, you won’t taste the saltiness due to there not being enough to majorly salt the water, but they are still plenty to act as electrolytes, which facilitate hydration in general. Think of them as making your body more prone to absorb water, and hydrate (namely, because salt is great at making water move around).

Also, if you removed all of it from your water, you’d actually notice the water tastes bland, so you do taste it.

Answer 3

Sodium and chloride are basically salts. When you add salt to the water, it breaks down to sodium ion and chloride ion. which is why they are labeled as two separate things.

Why does it matter? because of taste. Distilled water doesn’t actually taste like nothing, but rather flat or metallic. in other words: unpleasant, so we add salt to make it more drinkable.

Every other thing in bottled water is usually metallic ions. Its there because nature demands it, and because there is metal in natural water. You could remove it, but it’s not harmful and actually quite beneficial so why bother?

Answer 4

All spring + tap water contains a small amount of minerals and that’s perfectly normal. You actually need small amounts of these salts in water for your body to function and absorb it properly.

The water doesn’t taste salty because the concentrations are so low, but the mineral content can alter the taste of the water.

In fact drinking pure distilled water with no minerals in it is actually really bad for you. Drinking distilled water will leach the minerals out of your bones over time.

That’s what killed my Grandmother… self induced osteoporosis from years of drinking distilled water because she was terrified of the tap water. Broke her spine and hip.