The water challenge

For lunch today, I got myself a glass of water to drink. Helen asked for water from the jug she purchased at Meijer. I tasted water from each glass, then told Helen I couldn’t tell the difference if my life depended on it.

Helen insists she can taste the difference between water from our RO unit and other bottled water. We decided to administer a taste test to Helen.

I put water from the RO unit and from the jug she bought from Meijer into three glasses. I didn’t tell her which was which, nor did I tell her which water type got two glasses. Her mission was to pick out the odd glass and tell me what kind of water was in it. (I had read about this technique for taste testing, but I couldn’t find where I’d read it.) There were six (23 – 2) possibilities, ignoring the option of tricking her by putting the same water in all three.

Helen picked one glass as our RO water and the other two as Meijer water, failing to identify one of the two glasses as RO water. I did a little victory dance. Katrina and Elena, who were eating lunch at the time, enjoyed the entire spectacle.

In all fairness, I should mention that she only had a small amount from each glass. It’s possible that drinking a larger amount would help her identify the water sources. At the very least, this proves that the water is not as dramatically different as some have insisted.

(Comments from old site:)

Water

Today, Brad tried to trick me. I asked for a glass of water. He turned on the RO unit and brought me a glass. I drank the entire glass and declared that this was, indeed, the Meijer water. Brad confessed.

A minor clarification

I was loud in turning on the drinking water faucet and moving the Meijer jug to intentionally obfuscate the kind of water she was getting. In addition, she knows I always give her her precious store-bought water. Like she said, she drank the entire glass, then said it was the Meijer water. I said, “Yep.” Hardly a confession on my part.

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