• Question: why doesn't water have a taste

    Asked by anon-239890 to Struan, Charlotte, Isabel, Douglas, David on 17 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Douglas Bray

      Douglas Bray answered on 17 Mar 2020:

      Water does in fact have a taste and it is actually sour.

    • Photo: David Threlfall

      David Threlfall answered on 17 Mar 2020:

      Water does have taste, ii comes form the minerals, gases and other substances dissolved in it. Try an experiment – taste water from highland Scotland (or Wales), the Peak district and distilled water

    • Photo: Struan Simpson

      Struan Simpson answered on 18 Mar 2020:

      This is a fun question! Since I’m Scottish, I read this question and my gut reaction was to think of course water doesn’t have a taste, but then reading Douglas’s and David’s comments reminded me that the “flavour” of water has a huge amount of variation depending on where you are in the world, and what’s dissolved in it!

      I also liked this question because it reminded me of the consequences of drinking “ultrapure water”. This is water that contains no minerals or other chemicals dissolved in it, in contrast to our regular drinking water. I’ve never drunk it, but I believe it would have barely any taste (if any!).

      You might think that this ultrapure water would be safe to drink, since, after all, it’s just water right? This turns out not to be the case though! Because the water is so pure, it really wants to soak up the minerals and ions that exist naturally in our body, which makes it bad for you if you drink enough of it. This is why, although we clean our water, we don’t want to completely get rid of all the minerals and chemicals in it!

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