“Water, water everywhere, not a taste to taste”
Water has proven to be the most essential elements for consumption for all living beings. Be its presence in the external environment or internally i.e. our body, it forms the major chunk. Across the globe, the primary scientific facts about water and its properties are part of the standard syllabus.
Water forms part of the natural cycle in the atmosphere. It also is the most essential part of our, humans, lifecycle as well starting from birth to our death by occupying vital role in various ceremonies & rituals. As far as I have witnessed, asking for drinking water has the globally accepted sign language too.
With such a high consumption rate on an hourly basis by us in various activities, presence of high to at least some percentage of water content in most food items, existence of water in at least one of its physical states everywhere, it is hard to believe that humans like or prefer or maybe just habituated to consume something without taste.
We know the five basic tastes - sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. These are primarily driven by our taste buds and their receptors. We could thus say that water does not have the composition which binds to our taste buds, but could very well have a certain taste of its own.
We have been taught time and again the definition of ideal water which is tasteless, colorless and odourless. It is again something which was passed on from one generation to the next. This definition acted like a litmus test for us.
With the various purification processes such as using ultraviolet radiation, reverse osmosis, adding minerals, etc. to make water ‘healthy’, there could be a certain taste that is being added. This is highly visible when we taste it for the first time. But as we get accustomed to it, the taste vanishes. We could apply the same to our saliva. Ever wondered, does our saliva have any taste?
There are some studies which are suggesting that only while drinking water does trigger a part of neurons in our brain implying that there is a possibility that it does activate or trigger a receptor. The taste which one might get from water at times, could also be influenced by what one has eaten as well prior to drinking water.
The taste of water is quite debatable with varied opinions based on different facts and findings. There has been nothing concrete presented which has been acceptable across. Ideal water still goes by the standard definition. It is primarily a medium for carrying other tastes.
We couldn’t possibly try to determine the taste of water because of quite a heavy influence of conditioning, bias, notions, and so on, but the least we could do is concentrate on taste of water while drinking water. Give water its due importance.
