The Most Nutritious Way to Serve This Food
Filtered, if required, to remove impurities. (Bacteria may multiply on an ordinary faucet filter.
Change the filter frequently to protect your drinking water.)
Diets That May Restrict or Exclude This Food
Low-sodium diets (“softened” water, some bottled waters)
Buying This Food
Look for: Tightly sealed bottles, preferably with a protective foil seal under the cap. If you
are on a low-sodium diet, read the label on bottled waters carefully. Many bottled mineral
waters contain sodium chloride or sodium bicarbonate.
Storing This Food
Store bottled water in a cool, dark cabinet. Water bottled in glass will keep longer than
water bottled in plastic, which may begin to pick up the taste of the container after about
two weeks.
Improve the taste of heavily chlorinated tap water by refrigerating it overnight in a
glass bottle. The chlorine will evaporate and the water will taste fresh.
Preparing This Food
Let cold tap water run for a minute or two before you use it to pick up air, which will make
it taste better.
What Happens When You Cook This Food
The molecules in a solid material are tightly packed together in an orderly crystal structure.
The molecules in a gas have no particular order, which is why a gas will expand to fill the
space available. A liquid is somewhere in between. The attractive forces that hold its mol-
ecules together are weaker than those between the molecules in a solid but stronger than
those between the molecules in a gas. When you heat a liquid, you excite its molecules
(increase their thermal energy) and disrupt the forces holding them together. As the mol-
ecules continue to absorb energy, they separate from each other and begin to escape from
the liquid. When the concentration of the molecules escaping from the liquids equals the
Water