With more than 30 years’ experience in the residential and commercial water treatment space, Mark Nelson is a Class 1 Drinking-Water Operator and a CBWA (Canadian Bottled Water Association) Certified Plant Operator. As founder and president of Nelson Water in Ottawa, Mark focuses on dealing with challenging water treatment system designs for problem water. He also heads the largest water bottling plant in the city of Ottawa with a delivery network throughout the Valley.
Taste is an extremely subjective sense and many people have a polar opposite position on whether a particular drink or type of food tastes good. When we think about water quality, one of the more overlooked aspects is the effect that it can have on taste. When you compare the taste to health, it may seem like a trivial concern. That said, we need to drink water and eat food to survive and if it’s unpalatable we are less likely to consume it. When you’re preparing a lunchbox for work or school or a family dinner, the last thing you want is poor quality water ruining the taste. In this article, we will take a closer look at how the water quality can degrade the taste of foods and drinks.
4 Water Quality Problems Explained
If you’re supplied with hard water to your home, you’re not alone. Both private wells and public sources of water tend to be hard in nature. This means that they contain elevated concentrations of certain dissolved minerals, such as calcium, magnesium, and iron too in certain iron-rich areas. Hard water can cause a large number of problems in the home, and it can degrade the quality of your food in four ways:
1. Baking with Hard Water
The presence of hard water minerals is easy to recognize on spotty dishes from the dishwasher and the formation of scale on plumbing fixtures. But, many people are less aware of the effect that hard water has on their cooking and baking.
If you’ve ever followed a baking recipe carefully and the results were not what you expected, the problem may be the hard water. When you bake with water that contains calcium, magnesium, and chlorine, the performance of certain ingredients is degraded. The presence of high concentrations of minerals can alter the gluten structure of the dough. The yeast is less effective and this can slow fermentation or make the dough tough. This may be why your bread and cookies are tough and hard to eat. Removing the minerals will allow the ingredients to work properly, and you may discover that you’re actually pretty good at baking.
2. Taste is Important
When we consider taste, we typically talk about the final taste of the food that we eat. But, the taste of the individual ingredients is extremely important. This is why top chefs taste the food as they cook to ensure that the ingredients are good enough to use in their dishes. One vital ingredient that’s used in many recipes is water and the water quality tends to be overlooked by too many cooks. If there are impurities and chlorine in the water, it can degrade the taste of fresh and cooked food. This can occur when foods are prepared or washed in poor quality water or if they are cooked in that water too. The bad tastes in water are absorbed into cooked foods which will affect the final flavor profile. Although chlorine and chloramine (chlorine mixed with ammonia) are proven to be effective disinfection agents, they are often accompanied by a “swimming pool” odor and taste. This is very noticeable if you live closer to a water treatment plant. Extra chlorine is added to the water to boost efficacy for a longer journey to outlying areas. So, if you live closer to the plant, you will get more chlorine than areas that are further away. When chlorine is removed, and the water is hot you will notice that you can experience the authentic taste of your cooked foods. Rice and pasta will have a creamier texture, and the cooking times will be significantly shorter.
3. Aesthetic Appeal
Taste is extremely important, but the aesthetic appeal shouldn’t be underrated. Most people don’t want to eat food that looks dull and unappealing and this is a major problem if you’re trying to eat healthy foods. Vegetables may have no vibrant colors and the texture of the food may be altered to a mushy mess that’s a chore to eat. The main culprit is chlorine based disinfectants that strip the color from foods. When you consider that chlorine is a primary ingredient in household bleach, this is easier to understand. This may be why your cooked foods have a yellow faded color that looks unappetizing on the plate. When filtered water is used for food prep and cooking, the vibrant colors are preserved, and the texture of the food is optimal for a pleasant dining experience.
4. Boiling Water Times
Hard water boils slower than softened water because it contains elevated concentrations of dissolved minerals. These minerals raise the boiling point, which increases the cooking times and the energy required to reach them. Most people lead very busy lives and preparing a healthy home cooked meal is important. Reducing the cooking times and saving money on energy bills is possible if you install an ion exchange water softener in your home.
In Conclusion
Many people have concerns that a water softener will add salt to their water, making it salty and unpalatable. For the most part, these are unfounded fears, and there are good reasons to disregard them. The best way to deal with these concerns is to understand how an ion-exchange water softener works. The softener has one or two tanks that hold a brine solution and a bed of resin media beads. The beads hold a charge which attracts the dissolved mineral ions to their surface, where they become stuck. The salt (sodium or potassium) ions are then added to the water, and it goes into the home. The volume of salt that’s added is an extremely minute quantity that most people won’t notice. But, people with extreme salt sensitivity or those on a low-salt diet may want to avoid it. A simple solution is to use a potassium-based water softening salt that’s more benign in nature than a sodium-based salt. An alternative would be to install a reverse osmosis filter to remove the salt, chlorine, and other impurities after the water softener.
If you’re considering a water filtration or softening installation in your home, contact your local water treatment specialist.