Bottled Water

Once in a great while, if at an outdoor concert during the hot and muggy summer or at a ballgame, I may buy bottled water, but outside of that, I tend to stick with tap. My folks cringe when I do so, but based on an interesting discussion I had with my mother the other day and on the San Francisco Mayor banning water bottles, because he feels it harms the environment and screws taxpayers, I did a little (lot of) bit of research.

For anyone interested, just type something along the lines of "bottled vs. tap water" at dogpile.com and you can then feast your eyes on several different study results.

Why do people drink so much bottled water anymore? Some say that it's safer and others claim to prefer the taste. However, of all the studies I read, NONE concluded that bottled water is safer than tap water. They were nearly identical in their safety. In fact, many claimed that tap water is better for you than bottled, as it has a more consistent fluoride. A blind test was also given on 20/20 to see if people ACTUALLY believe bottled water to taste better than tap. What water scored the worst? A bottled water, Evian. Out of five bottled waters and the tap water, the tap scored right in the middle, tying for 3rd out of six. Only two bottled waters scored better and three scored worse than the tap. However, the disinfectant used are different for both the bottled and the tap water. While tap uses chlorine (which is more consistently effective, but can leave a stronger aftertaste), bottled uses what is referred to as ozone. Ozone does not leave the same aftertaste as chlorine, but it's also not as effective a disinfectant.

I'll have to do some more research on the matter, but it seems to me that the bottled water industry has quite the little scam going on. For how much more it costs people to pay for a bottle of water than to drink some on tap (the bottled water industry made $5 billion last year), I can't understand for the life of me why people seem so insistent on drinking bottled water over tap. From what I've seen, it's less healthy, doesn't taste much better nor worse, and is a great deal more expensive. Do the research yourself, but from this point forward, I'm going to be even less tempted to ever buy bottled water.

PS: I don't think a complete ban is the answer, though. As always, I feel some competition is good to hopefully motivate and get the best out of all competition involved.