Ten Ways To Make Your Water Taste Delicious Without Chemicals
Do you want to drink more water but… ugg, it's just so bland? Do you keep looking for new ways to make your water delicious?
There's a lot of different things out there that make water taste better, but they're just so packed full of chemicals.
What can you do?
Water doesn't have much of a taste when it's healthy, and you know that keeping your food and drinks fun and exciting make it better for you. You want to do the healthy thing for your body and get more water, and you just need a little help keeping things interesting.
Let's try these couple of tips:
1. Get A Filter
Some people are fortunate and have well-water with good taste. Some people even have access to a spring with fabulous tasting water. But, most of us have city water, and it just doesn't taste the best. You may get that chlorine taste or it's just bland.
A filter can help remove many unpleasant tastes and some undesirable elements like extra chlorine and other bad-tasting dissolved solids. It's not perfect, but it does help. Plus, it aerates your water and that makes it taste better.
2. Aerate – Avoid Heating It Up
Even if you don't have a filter, simply shaking a bottle of water helps put air into it. But, you want to avoid heating it up. Heat drives the oxygen and carbon dioxide out of the water. That makes it taste flat and metallic. Heating it is good for tea, but not for drinking plain water.
Some carbonation machines are low-cost and can give you fizz in your water, which can help replace some of the lost flavors.
3. Citrus – Lemon, Lime, Orange
Perhaps the easiest additive to your water is a few drops of lemon. It's available in bottle form so you can add as much to your water as you find tasty. Of course, fresh is better tasting. A slice of citrus can liven things up.
Or you can cut up a whole fruit and put it in a pitcher. You then have flavored water all day!
Just be careful about non-organic fruit. It could still have pesticides on the outside of the peel.
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Red Berries – Strawberries, Raspberries, Goji Berries, Cranberries
In the summertime, ripe, juicy berries can add wonderful flavor to your water. Tossing a couple of raspberries in and muddling them releases the juices to give a wonderful taste.
Even in the winter, you can soak dry berries, which is often how you find goji berries and cranberries. It takes a little longer, but you can squeeze out the juice and flavor your water after the berries rehydrate.
Freezing a few berries into ice cubes is a lovely decorative idea that can add flavor. Frozen berries easily release juice, so frozen berries in your water is always an option.
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Cucumbers
Cucumbers provide a wonderfully fresh taste without adding a whole lot of overt flavor. Particularly on hot days, it can make your water feel very refreshing and cool. Cucumbers themselves are mostly water, and in traditional medicines, are said to lower the heat in the body.
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Minty Goodness
Fresh or dried mint leaves add a terrific flavor and texture to your water. There are over a dozen types of mint you can get. It can range from straight peppermint to orange mint, lemon mint, and chocolate mint. Each of them offers a slightly different flavor that can be fun to explore.
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Black & Green Teas
Cold or hot, tea will flavor your water with a vast array of flavors. Herbal teas have no caffeine, and even green and black tea don't add caffeine until you brew it hot. You can make some tea in the summertime by adding a few tea bags to a jar of water and setting it in the sun for the day. In the wintertime, you can brew up a large jar with hot water.
If really enjoy the taste of tea, several high-end specialty shops and online stores offer different types of green and black tea, each with their own flavor profile and deliciousness.
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Sparkling Water & Seltzer Water
If you just need a little bit of pizzazz in your water, add some sparkling water or seltzer water. This can give you a little bit of carbonation, a little bit of tickle to your tongue as you drink.
Of course, you could combine it with any other flavor. A popular combination is seltzer water, mint leaves, and berries. You could add the red wine and get a sangria, but alcohol is dehydrating. If you're looking to get water into your system, skip the alcohol.
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Herbal Infusions – Thyme, Rosemary, Sage
Rich, herbal infusions provide a lot of flavors and medicinal benefits. If you take some of your cooking herbs and add them to very hot water for about 15 minutes, you get an infusion - the flavor of the herb infuses the water. And they smell heavenly!
Some of the top herbal infusions include sage, which is often used as a mouthwash to reduce bacterial infection and cavities; thyme helps reduce stress and may improve memory; and rosemary is said to boost your immune system and blood flow.
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Your Favorite Juice or Soda
You can add soda or juice to your water or do the reverse, add water to your soda or juice. If your transitioning from a diet where you drink very little water and a lot of sugary drinks, watering them down can help start your transition.
Some people don't like the taste of watered down juices or soda, so we recommend being careful with this. You want your water to taste good, not like you're missing out on something.
We hope you try out these techniques, especially things you haven't tried before. These are great ways to flavor water that can keep you interested for a long time.