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The Bottle Boom — Why Buy Bottled Water?
Part 3: Bottled water — A matter of taste
The other reason people give for drinking bottled water is its taste - bottled water, they said, tastes better. Yet when this was tested, those who professed to be able to tell the difference failed miserably. The testers used Evian and Highland Spring against local tap water - three waters which had very different characteristics from each other. Even so, only one-third of the 140 people got the correct answer. That is exactly what one would expect to get by chance.
I like the following article which was published in The Times on 10 July 2002
Forget the bottle, for purest water turn on the tapBy Anthony Browne, Environment EditorIT'S purer. It's gentler. It's Yorkshire.
Water wars have broken out as Yorkshire Water and United Utilities have bottled their tap water to launch themselves as brands to take on Perrier, Evian and Highland Spring. |
Conclusions
The major problem with bottled water is that we just don't know what is in it.
Tap-water regulations make it mandatory that the public water supply is tested
daily and that findings are freely available for scrutiny. There are no similar
regulations for mineral and spring waters. What we do know, however, is that
bottled mineral and spring waters have no health-giving properties over tap
water. We also know that, while most bottled waters are safe, their mineral,
chemical and bacterial contents mean that they may not be
as
safe as tap water. Yet they cost around 1,500 times as much as tap water.
Before 1980 there were few regulations for tap water. Recent
advances in equipment sophistication have meant that substances can be detected
now at levels which previously were impossible. As a consequence, materials
have been discovered in tap water which previously were unknown. These
discoveries have been blown out of all proportion by organisations such as
Greenpeace and the media, and we have all fallen for it. We have been duped
into believing that tap water is unfit for consumption. American studies have
found that drinking tap water in any part of the USA is safer than drinking
bottled water. No study there or in Britain has found any benefit with drinking
bottled water. While sparkling waters do tend to have a slight advantage, as
the carbon dioxide gas used to make them fizz has antibacterial properties, no
bottled waters are considered safe enough to be recommended as a drink for
children.
We have an anomalous situation where different regulations apply
to what is essentially the same commodity, merely packaged in a different way.
Bottled waters should be subject at least to the same regulations as tap water.
It could be argued, however, that if their advertising is going to stress their
inherent purity, and if they are to cost so much more, perhaps their
regulations should be even more stringent. There is little doubt that if tap
water regulations were applied to bottled waters, many would disappear from
supermarket shelves.
And, by the way, do you suppose some water bottlers are having a
laugh at their customers' gullibility? How many purchasers of Evian have
noticed that this name spelled backwards is
'NAIVE'
?
References
Walker A. Drinking water - doubts about quality.
Br Med J
1992; 304: 175.
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
The Natural Mineral Water Regulations. Statutory Instruments No 71
. London: HMSO, 1985.
Allen HE, Halley-Henderson MA, Hass CN. Chemical composition of bottled mineral
water.
Arch Environ Hlth
1989; 44: 102.
Hunter PR, Burge SH. The bacteriological quality of bottled natural mineral
waters.
Epidemiol Infect
1987; 99: 43.
Borghi L, et al. Epidemiological study of urinary tract stones in a northern
Italian city.
Br J Urol
1990; 65: 231.
Last updated 26 January 2003
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