As one who (wrongly) thought bottled water would be a short-lived fad, it's good to know that someone else doesn't "get it."

I came to Casablanca for the waters. Now he tells me I could have gone to K-Mart.

As one who (wrongly) thought bottled water would be a short-lived fad, it's good to know that someone else doesn't "get it."

If you're away from home or are in an area of the country where salts and/or mineral deposits make the water taste brackish or metallic, bottled water makes sense. Why anyone would spend the money for it over Catskill Mountains water piped into New York, other than as a status symbol, is beyond me.

In theory bottled water is useful for avoiding Montezuma's Revenge. But in practice, it doesn't help.

Also, bottled water does not contain fluoride, and thus doesn't compromise one's Purity of Essence.

Actually, New York City water is rated the best as far as purity levels. Stossel should get some of the water out of a Florida tap. Its so hard you could break a tooth on it.

I've always thought Evian tasted bad and Zephyrhills brand (it may be peculiar to Florida) is pretty awful, too. Of course, my dh thinks I'm nuts to insist water has any taste at all.

My tap water in Manhattan used to come out brown on occasion. My tap water in NJ tasted like the Meadowlands smell.

Evian definitely doesn't taste good, but Dasani (a Coca Cola product) tastes good. So does WalMarts Sam's Choice -- in fact that's the best I've tasted so far.

The bottles are useful, so buy the cheapest water you can find at the supermarket and refill the bottles.

So Harry gets on his soapbox the other day about bottled water and you've decided to help him out? I'd like to talk to your manager now, thanks.

joe:

It's just one of the many aspects of capitalism that he can't fathom.

I can't carry a tap with me in my car, or on hikes, or on my bike, or to the beach. Dasani tastes good and I like it. I can put some into the fridge and get a bottle of 38 degree water whenever I want it. The water from my tap doesen't come out at 38 degrees.

If you believe that there is no difference in taste then stop by central Texas sometime and try the tap water which comes primarily from Eutrophic lakes high in phosphorous and green and red algae. This condition is created from runoff from dairy and cattle farms and it can't be treated without astronomical cost to the taxpayer. The taste is so bad that restaurants have to serve canned soda since the soda syrup isn't strong enough to cover up the taste of algae.

Not to be a curmudgeon, but one could put a bottle of tap water in the fridge, and remove it nicely chilled, or carry it with on hikes and so forth...

As Shelton notes, there are some places, like Las Vegas, NV, where bottled water is a Good Idea, although in Vegas it won't exactly kill ya.

Best water I've ever had comes out of our well. (Send me $3.50 and I'll send you a gallon.) But when we lived in Manhattan, we drank bottled water.

Tap water in George W. Bush's hometown of Midland is pretty gawdawful, though not as bad as 15-20 years ago before the new reservior east of San Angelo was built. But once you get up in the mountains around Van Horn, the water's fantastic (which is one of the reasons why El Paso and some Midland and Austin businessmen are trying to figure out ways to pump it out of there and to the big cities).

There are reasons why there's a Stinkingwater River in eastern Oregon.

For most vile,in my experience I'd have to say the tapwater in Fallon, Nev. and the old (now removed) drinking fountain at Norris Geyser Basin in Yellowstone were at the top of the list. Part of the problem with the latter was the high arsenic content. (So high that in times of low river flow, the water of the Madison River at Three Forks, Mont. still may not meet EPA standards.) And even reconstituted Chicken flavor Cup 'o Noodles won't diguise the taste from a sulfide geothermal spring.

I think I would rather drink OJ's sweat then anything that comes out of a tap within the Atlanta city limits.

Yeah, joe, surprised me, too.

Taste, however, is not -- or should not be -- the issue.

My wife's uncle was general manager of the country's biggest water bottler, back when that was a minor business. He used to carry around a Washington Post story that tested bottled water v. water from public drinking fountains around the Capital.

The drinking fountain water was all sterile. All the bottled waters, except his, Mountain Valley brand, were polluted.

You don't have to know very much about capitalism to figure out how that happened.

So why is Sam's Choice not at Sam's Club?

Only in Wal-Marts AFAIK.

Raoul,
The water from Fallon, NV is probably some of the worst in the nation. It was found to have more than twice the allowable level of arsenic and when I used to live in the area, the fish in nearby Lahontan Reservoir were declared poisonous to eat. The water here in South King County, WA is quite good.

San Francisco tap water (already good) + Brita filter = good taste and no worries.

And did you know you can use a Brita filter to turn cheap vodka into good vodka? (Scroll down.)

Detroit city water - comes from Lake Huron. Man, it doesn't get much better.

I don't know if they still do but in the late '80s, the "Crystal Geyser" folks used to tout the O2 content of their water as being something good. Now in all my looking at chemical analyses of geothermal water, I never noticed oxygen among the dissolved gasses listed (usually it was traces of CO2, SO2 or H2S). I believe that's because the source of O2 in most water is from the plant life that was living in it. Not something you normally get from real "spring water."

(And I want my <small> and <sub> tags to work next time, too.)

BJW: eeeewwwww!

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