Why does water have such a neutral taste?
In: Chemistry
Water can have a detectable taste due to minerals and chemicals in the solution, but pure H20 has no detectable flavour or odour. It’s our fundamental base environment, that all life came from and is made of. Your body is more than 70% water, your saliva is 99% water, the air around you has humidity from 1%-99% (water), so the reason you don’t taste it, is there is no evolutionary advantage to have that ability. What we can taste and smell are things IN the water, which has obvious advantages.
Even if your brain was wired differently and could taste water, it would probably cancel out that sensation since it’s a constant, much like we don’t really notice the unique smell of our homes because we live in it, we don’t notice the ambient sounds of our environment because we get used to them. Our brains are wired to detect changes in our environment that are useful to us, could be dangerous, or are otherwise important for one reason or another.
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