Is drinking a cup of water part of your everyday health routine? If so, you’ll likely agree with us that purifying water doesn’t get more traditional than the boiling method. Before reversed osmosis came into existence, boiling water was the most common and effective mode of treatment, especially since drinking tap water was unsanitary and unsafe in many countries. More so, although boiling water has been a common practice for filtering impurities and contaminants for so long, it’s not unusual to wonder how effective this method is for killing bacteria and other harmful substances. Are you wondering if the pros of drinking boiled water outweigh the cons? If so, to answer this question thoroughly, let’s first take a good look at the disadvantages of drinking boiled water.

Disadvantages of Drinking Boiled Water

disadvantages of drinking boiled water

Image. credit: Alex Chernenko

Before we highlight the disadvantages of boiled water, let’s first get things straight – purifying water with the boiling method is quite simple and helpful, be it at home or far away from civilization. This is because the heat actually destroys any harmful bacteria. This is especially true when water is boiled at the correct and various temperatures, making it difficult for many microorganisms to survive. However, temperatures must be maintained for 30 minutes. So, anything higher than that would do the job of eliminating beyond half of the microorganisms.

Also, drinking boiled water while it’s still warm provides you with health benefits like improving bowel movement, digestion, increased metabolism, weight loss, and better circulation of blood. But, if boiled water can offer all these benefits, what is the downside to drinking it on a regular basis? Let’s find out.

1. Time-consuming

It is the 21st Century and there are more advanced methods of purifying water. In fact, you can get purified water in a bottle, which will cost you money but not time. The time it takes to boil water is enough to do something else, e.g prepare a quick meal.

How about the times when you don’t have access to safe-to-drink tap water? Well, instead of taking the time to boil water and wait for it to cool before drinking, you can use a reverse osmosis purifier. Reverse osmosis uses pressure to push the water through a semi-permeable reverse osmosis film which then removes ions, leaving the water purified. This method definitely saves you time in urgent situations and quite often delivers the purest alkaline water out there.

2. More expensive

Boiling water takes a minimum of 5 minutes in a kettle depending on the volume of water that is being treated. Larger volumes will undoubtedly consume more gas or electricity. Now think if you have to do this multiple times in a week; you can imagine the amount of electrical energy or gas that will be consumed. That obviously means higher bills to pay. So to conserve energy and reduce cost, a safer alternative like using a reversed osmosis purifier is best.

3. Remnants Of Heavy Metals

Boiling should be avoided if you suspect the water contains toxic metals, nitrates or chemicals such as solvents, pesticides, lead, asbestos, and mercury. If you go ahead and boil such contaminated water, the boiling process may not filter the harmful contaminants completely. At the end of the day, the water might still need to be filtered through a filtering system.

4. Boiled Water Can Taste Bland

disadvantages of drinking boiled water (1)

Image credit: Daria Shevtsova

Water has a natural taste that is neither sweet, bitter or sour. It just tastes like water. However, after being heat-treated, boiled water might not retain a good taste. In fact, boiled tap water can lose its natural taste which is not usually encouraged. This then results in you having to mix your water with flavouring like Manuka honey. Using purifying systems is a better option for drinking water.

Great health information about Manuka Honey 

5. Loss of Natural Minerals

During the process of boiling water at increased pressure, there is a high possibility of a loss of natural minerals found in natural water. However, opting for bottled or RO (reversed osmosis) purified water, means those essential minerals are retained.

In addition to the reduction in the quality of the water, the quantity of water will also diminish, resulting in excess use of water resources. As you may have guessed, the reversed osmosis method doesn’t have a significant impact on the quantity after the purification process.

6. Bacteria Residue Can Remain

Like heavy metals, it is hard to completely rid your water of bacteria, even with boiling. This comes with many hidden dangers. Reverse osmosis is most likely a better option because the RO membrane is made of a tight pore structure which effectively reduces the presence of impurities, odours and bacteria, up to an impressive 99%, making the water safer to drink.

7.  Concentration Of Dissolved Impurities After Boiling

After boiling, a substantial concentration of toxic waste might still remain. If the vaporisation process did not finish properly, sediments of the same toxic substances (which you tried to remove through the boiling process) will still be left inside the water. On the flip side, an RO purifier offers a higher chance of removing 99%, if not all, of the toxic substances and impurities;  leaving you with clean water to drink or cook with.

8. Improperly Boiled Water Is Unsafe

We mentioned earlier that boiling water is time-consuming, and can be very inconvenient during emergency situations. This might tempt you to halt the process before it reaches the recommended boiling point. The end result will be partially-boiled water with impurities or worse: chemicals.

The normal process for purifying tap water is to allow the boiling point to reach 212°F, then wait for 60secs before bringing down the temperature of the kettle or pot. Afterwards, the water can then cool for about thirty minutes before using it for drinking or cooking.

Due to the fact that it takes a total of 60 minutes before you can drink relatively safe boiled water, you might feel the temptation to speed up the process. That’s why it is better to have readily-boiled water in large quantities, or to use reverse osmosis purifiers for quick and easy access to pure and safe water.

In Conclusion

Boiled water has its benefits. However, as there are advanced filtering systems that will ensure you’re drinking the best quality water, it’s best to opt for those.

We hope you have learnt something new about the disadvantages of drinking boiled water. Please subscribe to our newsletter to get updates on future posts, and remember to leave a comment and share the post with family and friends.

The articles on this site are not medical or certified advice, all content that has been created is simply our opinions,experiences and independent research. We strongly advise seeking professional,qualified expert advice from either your GP or a certified medical practitioner before making any changes to do with your health,diet, exercise or habits.