Fun article on bottled water and … well, everything it isn’t. Like, healthier.
In 2004, Americans, on average, drank 24 gallons of bottled water, making it second only to carbonated soft drinks in popularity. Furthermore, consumption of bottled water is growing more quickly than that of soft drinks and has more than doubled in the past decade. This year, Americans will spend around $9.8 billion on bottled water, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
Ounce for ounce, it costs more than gasoline, even at today’s high gasoline prices; depending on the brand, it costs 250 to 10,000 times more than tap water. Globally, bottled water is now a $46 billion industry. Why has it become so popular?
It cannot be the taste, since most people cannot tell the difference in a blind tasting. Much bottled water is, in any case, derived from municipal water supplies, though it is sometimes filtered, or has additional minerals added to it.
Nor is there any health or nutritional benefit to drinking bottled water over tap water. In one study, published in The Archives of Family Medicine, researchers compared bottled water with tap water from Cleveland, and found that nearly a quarter of the samples of bottled water had significantly higher levels of bacteria. The scientists concluded that “use of bottled water on the assumption of purity can be misguided.” Another study carried out at the University of Geneva found that bottled water was no better from a nutritional point of view than ordinary tap water.
Bottled water has succeeded because — ad campaigns aside — it’s convenient. More convenient than carrying around a canteen you have to fill and you can’t just throw away, anyhow.
But, yeah, if I’m someplace where they’re charging money for it, screw it — I’ll get a soda and at least pretend I’m buying something for the flavor or caffeine.
So, when the article says something about “it can’t be the taste” I wonder what the breakdown in sales of bottled water are. “Most people can’t tell the difference” might be true on a national basis, but what about a regional basis? I suspect urban residents, who use a more stressed and often older water system, are much more capable of identifying bottled water over their own tap water than suburban residents. The tap water where I live is potable but foul; everyone owns at least one water filitration device if they don’t exclusively drink bottled water. And where I work bottled water is the only option — the water fountains have been shut down because of unhealthy levels of lead in the plumbing.
These gross generalizations over wildly varying circumstances really don’t tell us much of anything.
Good point.
When I first moved to Denver, I was amazed by how much better the tap water was (in Denver Water) than back in LA. Indeed, when I went to a home show and someone tried to sell me Sparklett’s-style bottled water, I had to laugh.
It would be interesting to do some taste testing. Certainly in our home we drink filtered water (via our fridge).