Drinking water of the highest category. Rating of bottled water

In Europe, it has long been a rule to drink at least 2 liters of still water every day, regardless of the number of first meals eaten and coffee, tea, other drinks consumed. This norm is sacredly observed by people of any professions and any material prosperity. In our country people are also gradually becoming attached to this rule, but not everyone knows what water is better to buy. On the shelves of her so many that the eyes run up. Few people meticulously scrutinize the information on the labels, besides, it is often given in such a small font that it is necessary to take a magnifying glass. Therefore, among the abundance of brands, some choose the most famous, others - the one that is cheaper, believing that the water is all the same. This is not entirely true, because there is water of the highest category and the first, and among them there is a natural and purified, which is not the same thing. So what kind of water should I take to benefit from it? Let's understand.

Why does the body need water?

Even children know that we are all 80% water. Daily 500 ml is lost with sweat and breathing, 1500 ml - with urine. Here in order to restore losses, and you need to pour in 2000 of the lost ml, only this should be quality drinking water. All this is true, but only partly. Firstly, the figure of 80% is average, and in fact, depending on the age, weight and other indicators of water in each of us is a different number. Secondly, we lose it, too, in different ways. In the heat more, in the cold less, being in motion more, lying on the couch less. That is, someone needs to drink it 2 liters, and someone and 3 will be small. But why drink it? Is it only to restore losses? It turns out that water is able to easily dissolve and organic, and all kinds of chemical compounds, for example, salts. Getting to us in the body, it takes in a lot of harmful substances, which are safely excreted in the urine. This is the natural cleaning of our systems from toxins and other mucks. Of course, the best drinking water, that is, chemically more pure, copes with this task much more effectively. And another important function of water - it undergoes chemical reactions and complex complex compounds are formed, without which we can not live. That is why the loss of our body of only about 10% of the liquid can end very sad.

Types of drinking water

Now they write a lot about what drinking water of the highest category is. The rating of these products partly helps to find out which brand to buy. It is based on all kinds of analyzes and tests that determine the compliance of the chemical composition of water to GOSTs and SanPiNs. But the results of such checks on the labels are rarely displayed. But there is almost always data that water is extracted in such and such a region from such a depth, other data not easily understood by every one is also reported. To clarify the situation, and perhaps even more to confuse it, we note that in nature there are approximately 476 modifications of water, depending on which isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen make up its molecule. Naturally, the properties of these waters are different, and not all of them are equally useful for health. Fortunately, not all modifications are able to last long enough, and on labels, information about them is not displayed at all. What kind of water can be used for drinking? Its most famous types are:

• Light;
• Heavy;
• Soft;
• Rigid;
• Underground (extracted from wells and aquifers);
• Mineral;
• Water supply;
• Purified.

Categories of drinking water

Apart from technical, which is not considered in this article, there are two categories of water - the highest and the first. In each country there are GOSTs and SanPiNs for bottled drinking water, regulating their taste, color, chemical composition, transparency. Drinking water of both categories, unless it is a mineral mineral, should be transparent, odorless, foreign impurities and sediment, otherwise it can not be used at all. Of course, the drinking water of the highest category should satisfy the higher requirements of the chemical composition. The rating, taken into account by many buyers, shows which of the quality marks passed by the quality control correspond to the norms. It is these products that become the most popular. About 700 types of drinking water are currently produced. It is clear that all of them are hard to check, and on the label unfair producers can write anything. How can a simple person distinguish high-quality water from a counterfeit?

First, for the price. If the water is really extracted in an ecologically clean region, and even from a decent depth, it means that it has high production costs. Therefore, it can not be cheap at all. If the water is of poor quality, the manufacturer does not risk exhibiting a high price, since it is very important for him to quickly sell his goods and get the benefit before possible verification.

Secondly, according to the information on the label. On it, if the water is of the highest category, the place of its extraction, the address and the site of the manufacturer, the chemical composition must be indicated. In reality in natural drinking water, almost all elements from the periodic table can be present, but most of the chemical elements are so small that they are not taken into account. Mainly indicate the content of such chemicals and compounds:

• Potassium (up to 10 mg / l);
• Magnesium (up to 20 mg / l);
• Sodium (up to 100 mg / l);
• Calcium (up to 20 mg / l);
• Nitrates (up to 45 mg / l);
• Chlorides (up to 100 mg / l);
• Sulfates (up to 30 mg / l);
• Hydrocarbonates (up to 300 mg / l).

Sometimes on the labels indicate the pH of the water, which should be in the range of 6.5-7.5. The discrepancy of even one of these indicators does not give the right to assign water to the highest category.

Water is light and heavy

The taste, color, smell, and the one, and the other are the same, but they are very different in their usefulness. Numerous experiments have proved that the best drinking water, which has, among other things, high healing properties, is easy. There are practically no admixtures of deuterium (hydrogen isotope) and other heavy elements, so cleaning the body of toxins, and all the metabolic processes in it are better. Light water, even in the treatment of cancerous tumors, helps. Heavy water, in which atoms of deuterium join the atom of oxygen, are harmless to humans if they are drunk in small amounts. But there is no benefit from it either. In nature, deuterium molecules exist in any water, from wells of whatever depth it is mined. It is logical that these molecules contain any drinking water of the highest category. Rating on this issue is not carried out, but choosing bottled water, you can buy products of well-proven brands, and make at home from this good, but ordinary water easy way of freezing in the refrigerator with subsequent thawing. What will melt, in the first place and will be the cleanest drinking water in the world, which is most useful for health. And the rest of the ice after such a procedure it is desirable to discard, since all harmful impurities will gather in it.

The water is soft and hard

With these characteristics, the situation is simpler. Soft water or hard - depends on the content of magnesium and calcium salts in it. In small quantities, both can be drunk, and in large hard water can lead to the formation of kidney stones, and soft - to problems with pressure. In everyday life, you can determine the hardness of water by eye. So, if the calcium and magnesium salts are too much, the foam when soaping hands will be small, and if the shortage, it will seem that soap is not washed off. But, buying water in the store, no one conducts such experiments. Yes it is not necessary, because the content of hardness salts in water is strictly defined by GOST and must be indicated on the label. In different countries, the figures may be slightly different.

In Russia, from 01.01.2014 water hardness is measured in degrees and is designated "° F" or in milligram equivalents per liter, of which in drinking water should be not less than 1.5 and not more than 2.5 units. Sometimes on the labels indicate not the hardness, but the amount of calcium (Ca2 +) and magnesium (Mg2 +), as well as their salts (CaSO4, MgSO4, CaCl2, MgCl2). The quantity of each salt is not regulated by GOST, only it is indicated how much they should be in the amount. If these norms are met, then we may well have drinking water of the highest category suitable for everyday use. The rating, in order to be high, must take into account the content of other useful microelements, especially nitrates, in it. As for inspections for magnesium-calcium, it was not passed by such popular brands as "Aqua Minerale", "Dombai", and in the water brands "Holy Spring" and "Shishkin Forest" was a lot of chlorine.

Mineral water

Now the mineral water is freely sold in any store, so many people buy it as a regular drink, being sure that mineral water is any where there are trace minerals. In fact, mineral water is water extracted only from certain aquifers and has a strictly regulated chemical composition. That's just this water of the highest category can have a rather unpleasant aftertaste, smell, and sometimes even color and sediment, which depends on the salts with which it is rich. It is important to know that, despite the rich (indicated on the labels) chemical composition, water is not considered mineral if it is a mixture of natural and artificially made. There will not be a high-quality mineral water and water, which is a mixture extracted from different aquifers, but, unfortunately, this label can not be determined. You can be guided only by brand names. So, time-tested and well-received consumers of natural drinking water are Borjomi, Narzan, Essentuki, Mukhinskaya, and in Ukraine - Mirgorodskaya, Kuyalnik, Glade Kvasova. According to the composition, mineral waters can be sulfate, hydrocarbonate, chloride, mixed, and table nutrients (microelements in them up to 1 gram per 1 dm cubic), medicinal-table (microelements up to 10 grams per dm ³ ) and medicinal. Daily use without consulting a doctor can only be a dining room.

Tap water and purified water

Previously, water in bottles, and even non-carbonated, no one bought, everyone was drinking tap water. To its purity, too, there are norms of GOST and SanPiN, therefore, in principle, it should be suitable for drinking in any quantities. Tap water in most countries is subjected to several stages of purification: mechanical, coagulation, filtration, aeration, sterilization or, alternatively, chlorination. Despite such a serious technology, the rating of drinking water from the tap is one of the lowest, because in it salt of various chemical elements is almost always present in large quantities, these elements themselves, for example chlorine, and sometimes pathogenic microorganisms. Therefore, we do not want to drink such water any more.

Smart entrepreneurs have come up with how to profit from it and at the same time do good. The method is simple and consists in additional cleaning. The costs for the entire process are relatively low, so the price of the product is small, although the label may indicate that the water is crystal clear, mineralized and generally the best.

However, a reasonable buyer should understand that the best bottled water can not cost 5-10 rubles per liter, even if it says "spring" or "artesian". For comparison, bottled water extracted from pure natural sources of the Alps, pulls 70-80 rubles per liter of baklag.

But what is purified water? We use two methods: trustworthy among the people, though not very clear to anyone, reverse osmosis and mysterious coagulation. We will analyze how they work.

Reverse osmosis is the passage of water through several membranes with a microscopic texture, on which all the elements dissolved in water remain one by one. As a result, it turns out almost perfectly clean, similar to distilled water. For health, it is not useful, since, having got into the body of a person, begins to replenish the useful substances removed from it, selecting them from our body. To prevent this from happening, the producers of it again enrich, so the trace elements listed on the labels of such water can be correct, but the highest category is assigned to it rarely.

Coagulation is the addition of a coagulant (clarifier) to the water, which precipitates certain chemicals and trace elements. After that, the water is separated from the precipitate and bottled. The process is so cheap and simple that about 70% of all manufacturers use it. So, buying the cheapest drinking water, you can stumble upon a product that is not particularly suitable for health.

Water from the Earth's interior

Wells of different depth (even more than 50 meters) are available to many Russians in yards. It would seem, why should they buy bottled natural water, if you can use your own, also natural. However, chemical analyzes of such water show the excess of microelements in it not in two, or even in ten, but in several tens of times. It is clear that you can not drink it. The problem is that the entire thickness of the earth's crust, like a cake made of cakes, is made up of geological layers - loam, sandstone, limestone and others. The closer to the surface of the earth and the closer to the settlements, especially to the industrial centers, the more in the layers of chemical elements, debris, waste of life of people and animals. All this easily falls into shallow-lying water layers, so they can be used for drinking only after thorough cleaning.

Not suitable for drinking and the so-called high water, formed during floods, floods of rivers. And yet, the depths of the Earth can give us clean and healthy water, only to get it, you need to drill artesian wells. In different regions, their depth ranges from 100 to 1000 meters. The necessary water must be between the waterproof layers of rocks and be there under pressure, therefore from the drilled well it beats with a fountain. In many respects artesian is the best bottled water available in stores, despite the fact that it also contains some salts and trace elements. Manufacturers, as a rule, indicate on the labels, from what depth and in which region their product is extracted. If this, for example, the Carpathians, the Urals or the Alps, in ecological purity of which no one doubts, we can safely say that such drinking water of excellent quality. The names of brands here can be dozens. Which one should I choose if there are no known and popular ones on the market? The only advice here is to trust the information on the label.

Carbonated water

It is believed that soda is better than plain water quenches thirst, that it is more tasty and completely harmless. But is it useful? If we take European countries, for example Greece, the founder of the rule about daily and compulsory drinking of water, so there is almost no carbonation in 1.5 liter, and even more, two-liter baklagas. This water is sold in a maximum of half a liter glass bottles, not counting the classic soda.

At us carbonate water all successively, adding to it carbon dioxide. It really changes the taste, and besides, it helps the salts to remain dissolved and not precipitate. This is why mineral waters are enriched with carbon dioxide before bottling in bottles, because there are a lot of salts in them. Should there be non-mineral water of the highest carbonated category? And why do it, if there is not so much salt in plain water to be afraid of their precipitation, and taste without carbon dioxide should be good? The answer to these controversial questions may be the taste preferences of buyers, many of whom like the soda.

The production of famous brands, whose producers cherish their name, can be bought boldly, but buying cheap soda, it is not out of place to think whether there is anything good in it, except for carbonic acid. But high-quality carbonated water can not be drunk in large quantities, since CO2, which is part of its composition, activates the secretion of gastric juice, adversely affects the enamel, promotes increased gas production in the intestine.

Rating of drinking water of famous brands

A single study that would cover all available water, without forgetting the one that is intended for coolers, has not yet been conducted, therefore, the rating of stamps can be considered conditional, since it was compiled on the basis of checks made selectively. According to one source, the best is Bon Aqua water, followed by the "Holy Spring", "Aqua Mineral", "Arkhyz". For others, the "Holy Spring" and "Aqua Mineral" did not reach the highest category at all, and the first place was occupied by the Nizhniy Novgorod water "Dixie". The second and third places went to "foreigners", French Vittel and Evian. Not only in Russia, but also in Europe it is the water of the highest category. Customer feedback about it is excellent, but a high price is noted by absolutely all respondents.

Domestic "Lipetsk Pump" is slightly cheaper, but there are fewer trace elements. "Aqua Mineral", according to the results of the test, was without trace elements at all, that is almost sterile, although the label does not. But the water "Shishkin Forest", "Just the ABC", Crristaline, Aparan, "Holy Spring" and even Bon Aqua, bottled in Moscow, were blacklisted due to gross violations of quality standards and cheating customers.