Distilled Water Association

Water Education through Science and Engineering

adding minerals to ro water

Why You Need to Add Minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water

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Reverse Osmosis water (ro) is pure and clean, scientifically speaking, it’s almost as pure and clean as Distilled Water, which means to the average person, both types of water are essentially equivalent to each other. So why ruin something so clean and pure? Why Would you want to add minerals to a water that’s completely clean and pure?

Several reasons, it turns out. And we’re writing this article thinking you already know about Adding Minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water so we’ll just concentrate on why you have to do it. Actually, let us be clear, you don’t have to do it if you’re a healthy person. If you’re not at the top of your game, you may want to consider adding it to your water.

Let’s talk about what reverse osmosis and distilled water are. They are types of water so pure, that everything has been removed from them. You cannot notice this when you shower or turn on the faucet but normal water that comes into your home has many impurities in it that are obviously invisible to the naked eye. A common impurity found in many parts of the world is calcium. After many times in the shower, you’ll notice in the shower head white residue forming to the point that if you don’t clean it, water has a difficult time coming out from it. Imagine that having to go through your kidneys! Not a good scene to look at…

But, when you have a super high level of water filtration, like Reverse Osmosis and Distilled water, everything is gone from the water. And that leaves us with a small problem. What if you’re a person with a compromised immune system or what if you’re drinking nothing but water as part of your fasting diet, can you still drink pure water? Well, the issue is that, since you’re not consuming enough foods to give you all the minerals that you need (which is the way normal people get all of their minerals and nutrients), then drinking a liquid that also has no nutrients and minerals can leave you severely malnourished.

So, that’s why you would need to add minerals into your water. Because all the good stuff has been removed through these two specific types of water filtration systems and you’re not getting the normal nutrients you would get through foods, like a normal person would, then you’re having to add all the good stuff back into the water.

There are also a couple more reasons why you would want to add minerals to water, for instance, if you’re an athlete and want to avoid drinking those high sodium, high sugar, power drinks, then maybe you want to make your own drink. Another example might be just taste; maybe you simply don’t like the taste of clean water after growing up with water that has high minerals (and other impurities).

Luckily, adding minerals to RO water is easy. Pour some water into a gallon container and drop a few drops to enjoy your mineralized water.

Reasons for Adding Minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water

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There are many types of brands of mineral providers and to make manners more complicated, there are dozens up dozens of different types of minerals themselves. No need to worry, we got you covered in our article Adding Minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water. In this article, we’re going to talk about some of the reasons why you may want to consider adding minerals to Reverse Osmosis (RO) water.

To Add Taste

The number one reason people add minerals to their RO water is that they want to change the taste of the water. Many people have grown up drinking either municipal water (aka from the faucet) or bottled water (which could also mean spring water). Those kinds of water contain impurities, including minerals. In fact, depending on where you live, the water from the faucet might taste a lot of different than the water in a different city or town. Some people are just used to the flavor. Some people love their local water taste and can’t get used to a new taste. The same is true if you go from mineral water to no-mineral water, like Reverse Osmosis or Distilled Water. Your taste buds want some of those minerals and impurities. You don’t want to add the bad kind of impurities, like bacteria, feces, and contaminants that are found in some municipal water systems but adding minerals is definitely a solution if you’re trying to get your taste buds inline.

To Recover after a Heavy Workout

When you workout or exercise, you sweat and among other things, you lose some vital nutrients. We’re all familiar with sport drinks that are designed to re-hydrate you. Some of those sports drinks may have too much of one kind of mineral (like sodium) while at the same time containing too much sugar. Some people opt to make their own sports drinks by adding their own concoction of minerals. It feels great knowing what you’re putting inside your body and knowing you’re drinking super pure water like RO or Distilled, and you know the exact minerals you’re adding (and more important, the amounts you’re adding).

When You’re Low on Minerals because of a Specific Diet

We all know most people get all of the minerals and nutrients they need from food sources alone and so adding minerals to Reverse Osmosis doesn’t really make sense. However, some people may be under a special diet and that may mean eating less nutrients than a normal person would normally ingest from food sources alone. A good alternate (especially when comparing prices) to make up for the loss of nutrients is to add minerals to your RO water. Some people decide also they want to go on a fasting diet… if you’re drinking nothing but RO or distilled water after several dies you might start getting really sick (even die!) because you’re literally not getting any nutrients at all, your fuel tank is literally running on empty. The solution is to add minerals so you’re at least getting something (and you might even consider putting more minerals than the lower bound recommendation).

Adding Minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water

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Minerals can easily and cheaply be added to any water, including distilled and reverse osmosis water

People often ask how to add minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water after we explain to them how to add minerals to distilled water. The answer is the same. In fact, any kind of water, not just distilled or Reverse Osmosis can be remineralized in the same way. We have the full article on Adding Minerals to Reverse Osmosis Water which is in general directed on the various types of minerals you can put into distilled water so in this article we’ll explain the subtle difference between the two systems.

If you’re used to having a Reverse Osmosis (RO) water system you’re probably used to just filling your glass of water directly from the faucet. Very convenient indeed. The inconvenience comes with trying to add the minerals to the system.

We know reverse osmosis uses several filters under high pressures to spit out water that has virtually no impurities and virtually no minerals. It’s an almost instantaneous process with the only drawback being the expense of changing the filters every so often.

So, if you were to add minerals at any point in the process, you can be certain those minerals won’t make it out of the system and into your glass of water. So, what do you do? Well, you can’t just add the mineral drops to your glass of water because of two reasons. First, each drop, depending on the brand and type of mineral additive you use, is usually good for a whole a whole gallon, that’s about 16 glasses. So, if you put one drop into one glass, your glass of water is going to taste probably very sour, not just salty. Second, you need to let the drops of minerals actually mix in the water, and, once again, that depends on the minerals and brand you’re purchasing. Most of the time, after one drop, you need to let it set in the water for 30 mins or so.

So let’s go through the actual simple and easy steps. From the faucet where you get your Reverse Osmosis water (ro water), fill out a pitcher (at least one gallon), then simply add minerals according to your liking. One or two drops of minerals should be enough. If you’re making an energy drink, you may consider adding a lot more (you can look at the mineral content of various sports drinks, like Gatorade, and then do some quick math on how many drops need to be added to the water).

It’s also dependent on taste. Some people are used to the taste you get from water bottles or the water faucet at home (aka municipal water) and so it requires some trial and error to figure out the right proportion of drops to water to use. The tricky thing is that, for example, if you add one drop to one gallon and you don’t like the taste but then you add 2 drops and realize it’s too strong of a flavor, then how do you split one drop in two? The solution would be to get 3 gallons of water and put two drops. And you might still not like it then!