Actually, I have done the blind taste test. We wanted to see if the expense of bottled water was justified. We buy Arrowhead Spring Water in the 2.5 gallon boxes. One person served the water to other, to keep it single-blind. We tested at both room temperature and chilled, so temperature controlled. Appearance of the waters was indistinguishable. I could 100% distinguish tap water from the bottled water. We even tested again the next weekend.
Conclusion: we keep buying bottled water. It’s good to keep several boxes around anyway for our disaster emergency kit.
The article states that in many cases the so called purification system resulted in bromides being added to the water. It is a carcinogen. The water regulation is better for the muni water. It does not require purification, specially one that makes it less safe to drink.
Unfortunately in most places we’ve lived (Micronesia, Indonesia, Mozambique, Egypt) the tap water is not necessarily safe. Problems range from erratic purification procedures to old pipes that leach heavy metals. Mozambique was especially depressing. We were told be sure our dishes, washed with tap water, were COMPLETELY dry before we used them, because cholera outbreaks were not out of the question.
Drying the nooks and crannies of my son’s sippy cups with a cotton swab, I felt like I was living a Barbara Kingsolver novel. We didn’t drink bottled water, though, because we couldn’t get it. Instead, we boiled all our water for 20 minutes, then ran it through a filtering system whose filters needed frequent replacement. (We boiled but didn’t filter in Micronesia).
In Egypt, as we did in Jakarta, we drink bottled water but we get it in water-cooler sized jugs and pour it into small, reuseable containers to take to school and work. The large jugs are returned empty for refilling.
So it is possible to be legitimately wary of tap water, yet attempt to find solutions that aren’t environmentally reckless.
At our home in Hawaii, where I am now, the tap water is delicious – sweet and wonderful. I’m drinking it now.
The point is that you can filter it yourself much more cheaply. It’s bad enough that plastic soda bottles are littered all over the place; IIRC, the production of the bottles itself contaminates the environment.
I’ve done a blind taste test too, and I could tell the difference also. But I just use Brita. I can’t believe it when I see someone at work put a dollar into a vending machine to get a bottle of Dasani. The 2.5 gallon boxes are much more reasonable, though.
The attraction to bottled water for me is that it’s usually nice and cold, and it’s convenient. I drink it when I’m driving, or at a fire. Finding available water at a gas station soda fountain is quite rare, since there’s no profit in it.
At home, in a restaraunt, etc., I drink the tap water. When I buy bottled water, it’s usually the biggest bottle of the cheapest stuff in the cooler. After all, I know it’s a scam…
This is the really expensive stuff, which usually is bottled "at the source’-a mineral spring. Unforunately, a LOT of this stuff is loaded with really unpleasant tasting minerals-Pellegrino water smells like rotten eggs. Some of the other waters have a lot of dissolved magnesium (tastes like soap), and iron (really nasty).
So, the best tasting water is usually the one with the least mineral content. So the filtered stuff is OK. And-since water is neither destroyed or created (every drop we drink has been endlessly recycled), can it be said that we are drinking “Caeser Water” or “Pharoah water”?
Might be a good advertising campaign!
Yes, Penn and Teller tell me my drinking water is safe and tasty. Because, after all, it’s made by the government. The same government that brought us peace in Iraq? Nope, the same government that makes life at the DMV such an efficient and pleasant thing.
How long has it been since this benign government has inspected the pipes in my apartment building? My guess is that it’s not been since 1938.
As it turns out, the tap water in my apartment is perfectly fine. But you can’t pay me enough to drink the tap water at work. When you can smell it from a distance, you know your tax dollars are as hard at work as you’ve come to expect them to be.
CairoCarol, you make a valid point about water conditions elsewhere, but in North America, there are very few places where the tap water quality is not strictly controlled, and North America is (I suspect) where most of the convenient little bottles of water drinkers live.
As for the taste of tap water, I don’t need a taste test. I have a very sensitive sense of taste, and our municipal tap water tastes better than anything I’ve ever had out of a bottle. Bottled water tastes dead to me. The only time I don’t like the taste of tap water is when I have a glass of it in a bar, and somehow they always manage to get a hint of celery salt in their water.
You want to hear something even funnier? Bottled water advertises itself as glacier fresh and all that crap - well, Calgary’s water comes straight off, you guessed it, a glacier. We have fancy high quality glacier water coming out of our taps, and people here are buying bottled water that is bottled god only knows where, but chances are good it isn’t as good as our tap water.
I might add that while I concede that I fully trust my local government in matters of my personal health, I can’t blame the good folks of Hinkley, CA or Woburn, MA for being a little skeptical.
When I gave up my soda habit, I picked up a bottled water habit. Not because it tastes better - though there are a couple of locations where the bottled tasted better than the tap - but for convenience sake. I prefer my water cold and portable.
Considering the ecological burden of all those bottles, though, I’ve switched over to carrying my own bottle with a flip top spout made out of that new fangled plastic you can pour boiling water into.
The only time I’ve really looked askance at bottle water was when I bought a bottle of Fiji (there was nothing else available, and I was parched), read the label, and learned that the water really did come from the island of Fiji in the southern Pacific. Because the Fijians don’t need their artesian springs for their own use. And nobody minds the carbon burden of flying tons of water over the Pacific ocean to be sold on another continent that has its own perfectly good water. I really did hope they were lying, and that they had gotten it out of a local tap. It would have made me feel better.
