The water at my office smells like chlorine. It's dreadful. I wouldn't even use it to make coffee, I fill up a nalgene at home and bring that in. My home water is well water and tastes a tad high iron, just the way I like it. (HOA regularly tests the water and it's always within legal limits, yay.)

Some people don't have access to decent tasting tap water

Most people IMHO. Most places I've been where they claim that the tap water is potable, it either tastes like public pool or swamp. Except for Galveston who somehow made it taste like both with residents believing "It's OK"

I don't know if offgassing is the reason the water tastes better when cooled overnight. I would do this with an enclosed bottle (no off-gassing possible) and it would taste equally better.

Definitely cooling it is an improvement, I always thought it tasted different due to how our mouth/taste buds responds to the dropping temperature.

If you have the money for it a water bottle with a filter (even just the carbon Brita ones) improve the taste immensely. I use an Epic water filter for everything and it makes nearly all water taste good*.

• The only exception I had was the Atlanta airport I have no clue what the fuck was going on their but the water was disgusting.

Also worth noting: don't use a filtered water bottle for filtering water that has contaimints you are actually worried about consuming; none except for grayl actually match their claimed results with third party testing.

Yes chlorine is a very volatile chemical and dissipates quickly.

The gaslighting people do about taste is insane. "Celery doesn't have a taste" "sweet potato tastes like candy" "Water doesn't have a taste" What planet do these people live on

Exactly the same here.

Plus, some people are really sensitive to tastes and textures. When we’re not them, we call them picky eaters. When I was a child, I couldn’t stand the taste of water, and there were other foods I found repulsive. Even a different brand of ingredient from the one I was used to made me gag.

Somehow, I completely grew out of that and I’m now very adventurous when it comes to food. But it did leave me with empathy when I encounter someone who has a limited palate, which is pretty common among my nerd-spectrum peer group.

When you think about it, eating the wrong thing is a quick path to sickness or death, so it makes sense that food can trigger extreme reactions of disgust. If you ever ate something and got sick afterward, even if the two were unrelated, it’s very hard to un-make that connection.

Those people are parroting harmful ideologies or have shitty sense of taste.

Water just wasn't really an option

This is funny, considering how many people in the world survive on muddy water they had to walk miles to collect in a bucket.

Similar to my ex-wife who grew up on well water with loads of minerals. She found tap water to be disgusting and said it tasted of chemicals. And everywhere I've lived in America, the tap water is indeed loaded with chemicals.

For anyone wanting a cool experiment to try: Turn your tap water on full blast and fill a cup. Immediately hover your nose directly above the water and take a deep smell. Now set that glass in the sun for an hour or three, or just leave it on the counter for a day, smell again.

For a longer term experiment: Water identical plants with a) only tap water, b) only rainwater. I catch rainwater and have found a profound improvement in my house plants and terrariums.

Same but I didn’t turn around til my 20s. Educate yourself and your loved ones! Sugar is highly unnecessary, especially in liquid form!

This is the answer. People above are somehow blaming private corporations for their public infrastructure (which doesn’t even make sense anyway) when the real answer is that many people just think “it doesn’t taste good” compared to the syrupy swill they’ve become addicted to.

Can confirm most public sources of water taste like garbage. Drinking fountains taste like liquid metal, city restaurant water tastes like chlorine, some people's tap water is straight up gross. But good water is SO GOOD. Filtered water or bottled spring water are safe bets, but the best water is actually good tap water; the minerals enhance it imo.

I'm on the opinion that marketing anything related to addiction is immoral and should be illegal. This includes cigarette, gambling, sugar, drugs (looking at you oxycontin), alcohol and even caffeine.

There is a backdoor into people's brains that should not be used. Allow people go get their own coffee and sugar but don't remind them it's missing when they're quitting.

(Coffee has been shown to be beneficial in reducing the overall death rate in adults when consuming something like 2+ cups a day so marketing it could be beneficial but the chance kids getting addicted to caffeine is something to avoid regardless.)

As a counterpoint, I don't replace water with anything sugary/flavored. I just... don't get thirsty, like ever, unless I'm working outside in hot weather. Most people's bodies remind them to drink. Mine doesn't. I try to remember to drink water throughout the day rather than just at mealtimes, but if I don't have a glass next to me, I will almost certainly forget. I feel like I can't be the only person like this.

The food industry's propaganda is that you need to drink 2 litres of water a day. You don't.

In 1974 the book Nutrition for Good Health, co-authored by nutritionists Margaret McWilliams and Frederick Stare, recommended that the average adult consumes between six to eight glasses of water a day. But, the authors wrote, this can include fruit and veg, caffeinated and soft drinks, even beer.

No

This is my issue. Now I use water additives like PureLemon and MIO to spike em. I try to drink 4-8 cups a day and feel better when I do.

I still slip into my days of 4 cups of coffee with no water often.

Have you considered getting a filter?

It sounds like somebody needs to spend more time watching documentaries on the mating habits of freshwater fish!

That is insane to me.

I've lived where tap water tasted like shit, not quite literally but eveytime I went home I'd have to remember not to drink the tap water. Eventually that town got a better water treatment plant but I can sort of see it from that angle. We always had the big 4gallon jugs (again may not be correct but the bigger jugs that sit on top for a dispenser) for regular drinking water

Thankfully where I moved to (many many kms away) the tap water was awesome, don't live there now but I still do tap water over filtered for the most part. Never seems that much worse so may as well.

Really the only reason you'd drink the other tap water was cause you're hungover...also been there. Then you remember that there's a water dispenser somewhere in that house cause no one drank the water from the tap in the town. Even the better water wasn't great but still noticably improved.

What would you suggest we do? Take precious profits away from stakeholders and repair shit? Sounds like communism to me buddy. Up against the wall.

Good thing access to clean drinking water isn't a human right. Oh wait.

Spicy water. Gross.

This is true. I had to force myself to develop a tolerance to plain water, but of course I'm really glad I did.

I still can't stand unsweetened flavored water (including tea*), or especially unsweetened and carbonated. Those are all very bitter to me, and therefore undrinkable - particularly given plain water exists.

*But I do like some tea in my sugar.

Yep, you basically gotta force yourself to drink it. I was this way, then about 12 years ago, I stopped drinking fizzy/sugary drinks and went over to water. Took me a good month + to get used to it, but I literally feel 1000xs better just chugging H2O all day. Plus it taste way better now, and sugar/fizzy drinks are way to sweat for me.

You are spot on. Water is absolutely not flavorless.

Fortunately I live in a place with high quality clean water, and on a warm day if I'm very thirsty, the taste of water is really really good, it clearly beats any soft drink IMO. I can even prefer it over a cold beer when I'm thirsty!
But even minor contaminants can make it taste way worse, if you live in a house with old plumbing, or if you can see buildup in the metal filter most taps have, the taste of your water is probably influenced by contamination besides Iron from the pipes. Good iron pipes are OK, but new synthetic pipes are better.

If I drink a carbonized mineral water, I can also most definitely taste the carbonation.

If the water smells like rainy weather or wet skin or in some other way smells off, it is probably contaminated. However the water can have a slight metallic smell because there are actually naturally occurring minerals in the water. BUT if your water is discolored, it is definitely contaminated, and drinking it can make you sick.
Our water is pretty high on calcium, but there is for instance also a small amount of lithium. Lower calcium water taste a bit sweeter, so natural water definitely exist that is even better than our water.

Remember always let the tap run for a short while before drinking from it.
If the water doesn't taste good, it's probably because it's not good.