Drop Dead Healthy by A. Jacobs (books to read to increase intelligence .TXT) 📕

Unfortunately, another question—what kind of water is healthiest?—turns out to be a surprisingly complex problem that took me on an unexpected quest.

First I learned that it’s probably not the stuff that flows out of our faucets. My friend Charles Duhigg did a massive investigation of drinking-water safety for The New York Times in 2009. It was a disturbing series. “As many as 19 million Americans may become ill each year due to just the parasites, viruses, and bacteria in drinking water.” Nineteen million. And that’s just the germs. There’s also carcinogens. “Some types of cancer—such as breast and prostate cancer—have risen over the past 30 years, and research indicates they are likely tied to pollutants like those found in drinking water.” Even if the water passes EPA standards, it could still be problematic. Your water could be within legal limits for arsenic but still pose the equivalent danger of 1,664 X-rays.

Dear Lord. I’d mindlessly drunk tap water all my life. I figured the government wouldn’t let poison flow from the taps. But in general, I’m too trusting of the government. I’m the polar opposite of the Tea Partiers. I have no problem with a nanny state. But in this case, the nanny state has been chatting on the cell phone and ignoring the baby as it plays with matches.

Another option: bottled water. Global bottled water is a $60 billion business, as Elizabeth Royte wrote in her book Bottlemania. It’s a decent alternative—but not necessarily safer than tap.

The regulations for bottled water are just as imperfect as those for tap. In 2006, Fiji ran an ad that said, “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” Don’t mess with Cleveland. The city had its water tested, and found no measurable arsenic. Fiji had 6.3 micrograms of arsenic per liter—below the legal limit, but still.

The other problem with bottled water—at least on the liberal Upper West Side—is the glares you get from neighbors. Carrying nonreusable bottled water is an environmental crime. As my friend told me, only half jokingly: “If you open an Aquafina water and listen carefully, you can hear the earth weeping.”

So for my stress level, I’m looking beyond bottled water. I asked Duhigg to point me toward the healthiest glass of water in New York City. “Go to Pure raw food restaurant,” he says. “It’s the only restaurant that boasts its filtration system on the menu.”

I enlist Julie to come with me to the downtown vegan restaurant. She’s more than a bit skeptical about trekking forty-five minutes for a glass of water.

“This better be one hell of a glass of water.”

“I hear that it’s like the dew from God’s front lawn,” I assure her.

When we get there, the owner, Sarma Melngailis, a stunning blonde, former Wall Street trader, tells me about the Tensui Water Filtration System. “Everything in the restaurant is from this water. The vegetables are washed in it. Even the toilets have it.”

Julie suggests a slogan: “Pure Food and Wine—where you can drink the toilet water.”

Sarma laughs, though demurs. She does say she likes the water so much, she has her pitbull drink it as well.

The waiter pours us our glasses. I swish it around in my mouth. I chew it like an oenophile.

Julie takes a sip as well. Her eyebrows rise.

“It’s actually really good.”

“Really good,” I agree.

I’d always thought drinking water tasted like drinking water. About as interchangeable as aspirin brands or Michael Bay movies. I was wrong. This glass of water was particularly smooth, like drinking velvet or riding in a Bentley. This was damn tasty water.

The Tensui system claims to suck out the contaminants (chlorine, fertilizers, pesticides) while at the same time “enhancing” your water with minerals (calcium, magnesium, zinc, potassium, negative ions, etc.). Though I should mention there has been little research on whether mineral-enhanced water is better for you.

I’d love to install the Tensui system in my home. The only problem? It’s fifteen thousand dollars.

I ask Duhigg what to do. He says the best brand that won’t force me to take out a second mortgage is called PUR. They make plastic pitchers with effective and replaceable carbon filters. New York has pretty decent water, Duhigg adds. “If you lived in New Jersey, you’d need a more sophisticated system, like a reverse osmosis one.”

I buy my PUR filter. To make sure it works, I hire a lab to test my tap water versus my PUR water. Sure enough, the PUR filter has lower levels of rat excrement and fingernails. Of course, there’s a catch. If I forget to change my PUR filter after two months, it’ll start to leach chemicals into the water and poison my family.

Cold Comfort

One final water dilemma: What’s the healthiest temperature of water?

Many of my books and advisers made a strong argument that tepid water is healthier. There are several alleged reasons: Tepid water soothes the stomach. It might even prevent cancer.

This was welcome news. For years, I’ve had an outsize aversion to ice water. I’ve always found it jarring and headache inducing.

So passionate was I about tepid water, I wrote a college essay about the man who foisted iced drinks on the world: Frederic Tudor, a nineteenth-century Bostonian known as the “Ice King.” Tudor was a genius. He bought up eleven New England ponds, and during the winter, he chopped them into enormous chunks and shipped them south. Even smarter, Tudor created a demand where none existed. A wily PR man, he whipped up a vogue for iced drinks, promoting them in Cuba, Martinique, and the southern United States.

Tudor even makes a cameo in Walden. Henry David Thoreau was innocently trying to commune with nature and avoid paying taxes when Tudor’s ice cutters descended on Walden Pond to carve it up. I resent Tudor and his misbegotten legacy of ice.

So I was delighted to hear that ice was dangerous. Until I researched it further. Unfortunately, evidence-based science gives little support to tepid-water claims. Most hard-nosed physiologists dismiss them as hogwash.

To my dismay, I’ve