This reminds me of our dog, whose tastes have evolved significantly as the kids have gotten older and the food they drop has presumably improved. Cheerios, once a delicacy to be inhaled, now sit on the floor unbothered until we sweep them up ourselves.

Refrigerated water does taste different, at first at least

This was a story!

I'd think your four kegged friends would drink from the kegs

These people could also be living on a well which typically have hard water. Most of them are safe to drink from but it won't taste great so it would make sense to filter it. There's nothing that hints at where they live so I wouldn't get to bothered by it.

Just because the water coming out of the ~~main~~ treatment plant is good, doesn't mean it's free of contaminants by the time it reaches your tap. Why not filter it once more before, you know, incorporating it into 70%+ of your body mass?

We moved to a new city and for the first time we had to buy a water container with a filter. I've never tasted tap water with so much chlorine in it and I was always the first one to say it's stupid not to drink directly from your tap.

So yeah, you don't know the people's situation in OP's screenshot, maybe the tap water just tastes bad.

It's not necessarily a filter thing, it could just be a temperature thing. In some cities even the cold tap water isn't that cold in the summer.

Loads of people in cities with perfectly clean and healthy tap water still use water purifiers because they like supporting the filtration industry, or worse believe in crystals doing magic to their water.

I've lived my entire life in the two best tasting water serving cities in America, and I grew up with and decades later continue to use, water filtration. I don't understand the flex you're doing here. And what is sad? Also, you do know much of the industrialized world outside the States drinks bottled water, right?

Why does a story about giving filtered water to a dog make you sad?

I've seen what my cats drink and eat. They find stagnant puddles riddled with mosquito larva and eat grass and dirt. I still give them filtered water in a nice constantly running pet water fountain.

Make sense now? We as pet owners don't think they can eat garbage or drink filthy water. But we've observed it. We don't actively give them garbage or filthy water.

I once started a story in a party with “well, I was brushing my dog's teeth”, and this asshole who was a +1 for a friend stopped me and started interrogating me. He just couldn't wrap his head around the concept that I brush my dog's teeth and try to keep them in general clean and healthy. This joke of a human being had dogs, as in several, and during that conversation we all learned that he pretty much neglected them. He thought dogs only need to be bathed every two months and fed daily and that was it. No walks, no play time, no hygiene routine, no vaccines, no de-worm, no vet check ups. Just miserably living in a cage for 18 hours a day and an occasional play session in the backyard. Like, no shit Raul, no wonder your dogs are losing teeth and always have diarrhea. You don't care for them and only feed them leftovers you dipshit. Thank goodness we never saw him again. I hope his dogs are doing better now.

Dogs are better able to handle dirty food and water than we are.

Doesnt mean you should feed your dog dirty food and water though.

My previous dog, despite having access to much cleaner water in the kitchen, drank daily from a bird bath in the garden... and she lived to the ripe old age of 14

It's my civic duty!

If people weren't still seeing it for the first time it wouldn't still be getting upvoted

Floridian here. Even from the fridge with the extra filter it tastes a little bit bad. I'm used to it, but when I visit out of state the water tastes "fresh" or "crisp". My brother who came to visit said my tap water tastes "slimy". It's not algae or anything just Florida water universally sucks in some manner.

Depends where in Europe you are. In England it mostly tastes like swimming pool water unless I filter it.

And when it comes to tasty, colder is better.

It's not necessarily an infrastructure thing impacting safety, but sometimes a water source thing effecting flavour and temperature.

Toronto is on the north shore of Lake Ontario and has amazing tap water, Kingston is 200km east also on the north shore of Lake Ontario and has horrible tasting tap water. The difference is that Toronto is next to a deep drop off in the lake, whereas Kingston is on a huge shallow section of the lake where the water doesn't flow nearly as much. Both are perfectly safe to drink but in Kingston they have to add more chlorine / treatment chemicals which add an off taste to the water, plus in Kingston the water comes out of the tap much warmer in the summer.

Water treatment plants just make the water safe, often you will need to filter it to remove anything else contained in the source water. Americans often buy filters to remove other contaminates, then you can go a step further with additives: magnesium sulfate, potassium bicarbonate, or potassium chloride and floride are pretty common. The minerals create the taste profile, it's the reason bottled water often tastes better than tap and why Dasani and Aquafina taste different.

Bagels shops often import water from new York for it's unique bacteria and mineral profile (similar to the magic soil in Italy for winemakers) https://www.ediblemanhattan.com/food-for-thought/why-is-new-york-tap-water-good/

I like the thought of American drinking condensed water from fridge. Maybe they have some AC water too every now and then.

It is water from the filtered water dispenser built into the fridge.

Some fancy ones have a tube that hooks up to a water supply, which can be used to make ice, or routed to dispense slightly cooler water than you'd get from the tap. Typically, you would want that filtered, and pretty much all new fridges with a water hookup are filtered.

Very convenient in a lot of ways, but I'm not a fan personally. Most people don't change the filters often enough, and there's really no way to clean things enough for my satisfaction.

But it is very, very convenient to have an ice dispenser and cool water in one place.