8 ms·
I think part of this is to do with the 'hydrate' word. Years ago, before water was advertised on television there was this word 'thirsty'. Sometimes, on a hot d
by Theodores 10y ago
I think part of this is to do with the 'hydrate' word. Years ago, before water was advertised on television there was this word 'thirsty'. Sometimes, on a hot day or after some strenuous activity you might be 'thirsty' and need to have a drink of tea or maybe just plain water for instant refreshment. The water came from the tap, where else?
But then times changed. Nowadays people don't listen to their bodies and drink accordingly. The advertisers have told people that they need to buy water and drink it to avoid getting dehydrated - 'mustn't get dehydrated'... Tapwater is inconceivable to this demographic, it has to be the stuff in plastic bottles (water cooler included).
I also like the way old-fashioned drinks are a slightly sociable thing. If I make tea I do it for everyone, we take turns. Meanwhile the 'hydrationists' sort their own bottled water arrangements out, it is not a shared thing.
I also like the way that tap water gets to your door. There are pumping stations, pipes and this thing called gravity!!! Meanwhile, the 'hydrationists' need little men driving big lorries full of water across continents, more little people in shops stacking shelves with this stuff, time out of their day to go to the shops to buy this stuff and the money to pay for it. I don't see myself as that special, tap water is more me (60% or so...), you are what you drink.
- hueving 10y agoMany people don't drink from the tap because they are convinced it's bad water (which is true in corner cases at least in the US). Everyone I know who drinks bottled does it because of this and it has nothing to do with this 'hydration' ritual you are theorizing.
- jacquesm 10y agoThe water peddlers have successfully convinced people in places where the water is perfectly safe to drink (and tasty too) that it isn't. There are plenty of places in the world where the water isn't safe to drink but a very large portion of those is so poor the people there could not afford bottled water anyway. But for places with old water lines and all kinds of junk in the water it can make good sense to use bottled water for consumption.
- dom0 10y agoI'm from Germany and it's almost uncanny with _some_ people. Like in, you get a glass of water (from the tap, where else?) and (some) people act like "What the hell is he doing?! Is he insane? You can't drink that!" n.b. Germany has some of the strictest regulations and accordingly the tap water is of excellent quality - everywhere.
- Noseshine 10y agoBesides, at least here in Germany you can always get the latest lab reports right from the website of your local "Wasserwerke". Examples: - Munich https://www.swm.de/privatkunden/m-wasser/qualitaet.html https://www.swm.de/privatkunden/m-wasser/qualitaet.html (the 1st PDF link) - Nuremberg https://www.n-ergie.de/privatkunden/produkte/wasser/analysewerte.html https://www.n-ergie.de/privatkunden/produkte/wasser/analysew... (click on the map, starts an interactive map, Flash unfortunately, from which the values for the four different areas they provide water for are available) - Berlin http://www.bwb.de/content/language1/html/3255.php http://www.bwb.de/content/language1/html/3255.php I knew a woman who was a water engineer at the local waterworks. She drank nothing but tap water. You can trust a product when the engineers that made it use it. . On the other hand, I spent some time in Russia and in Ukraine. I don't remember all the places any more, but I think the worst was in Odessa, Ukraine - an incredibly beautiful city that I fervently recommend visiting (even for someone who used to live in the Presidio in San Francisco) - where I would not even brush my teeth with the water. I had tried to use it to prepare pasta, the result was disgusting. Those pasta went into the trash.
- kaybe 10y agoThe US army camp in Heidelberg actually had their perfectly fine tap water chlorinated. From a German point of view (chlorine tastes and smells horrible) this is just ridiculous.
- wtbob 10y agoThe issue is that ozone purification cleans the water at the source, but it's free to pick up contamination in the pipes as it makes its way to the tap; chlorination works right up until the water is drunk. The downside is that chlorinated water does not taste great. If one has a good pipe system, the ozonated water is fine. If there's any worry, though, chlorinated is safer. I'm not surprised that a military base would choose the safer alternative: no-one ever got fired for ensuring that the water is safe to drink.
- FT_intern 10y agoAfter watching documentaries about America's crumbling infrastructure I've been paranoid about tap water. My thinking is that the less piping that the water travels through, the less risk of contamination. I've assumed that bottled water gets bottled right by the its source, minimizing the risk.
- noir_lord 10y agoSometimes that source is a tap though, infamously Desani in the UK.
- exhilaration 10y agoDepends on the water. The Coke/Pepsi waters (Dasani/Aquafina), among many others, are just purified tap water. So it goes through all the same piping that brings water to most American homes. http://abcnews.go.com/Business/aquafina-source-tap-water/story?id=3428260 http://abcnews.go.com/Business/aquafina-source-tap-water/sto... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasani
- gumby 10y agoBeware, Poland Spring (owned by Pepsi) in New England famously bored a well in a property they bought -- that had previously been a paint factory. Because of the success of food regulation in the USA it took a TV station to find this out.
- maxerickson 10y agoPoland Spring is owned by Nestle. The previous use of the surface site doesn't necessarily make the aquifer unusable. It would be much more damning if their water was tested and found to have higher than normal levels of volatile organic compounds or whatever.
- seanp2k2 10y agoI think that the "paint factory" part is "amusing" due to lead. Oakland had lots of lead in the soil from previous industrial contamination: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_contamination_in_Oakland https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_contamination_in_Oaklan...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gambiting 10y agoI'm from Poland where I don't know anyone who drinks water from the tap, purely because of widespread belief that tap water is bad(which comes all the way back from communist times, when you couldn't trust what the government said). My mum drinks water from the tap if nothing else is available, but only after boiling it first.
- david-given 10y agoI live in Zürich. The water company here says that it's unfair to compare the tap water with bottled mineral water; the tap water is substantially better. (I had a tour of the plant. They are a serious group of overachievers. The source of the water is mostly the local lake, and is purified by, two grades of sand filter, activated charcoal, ozone purification, and a bacterial bed. They actively manage the biofilms in the water pipes; the water itself is so clean that chlorination is unnecessary. They also actively manage the local aquifers so that the underground water flow near any industrial site flows away from their collection wells. There are two separate distribution networks, one for emergencies, plus a warehouse full of bagged water ready for distribution. And, best of all, it tastes great.)
- wlievens 10y agoWell it's just plain unfair to compare German efficiency and thoroughness with... anywhere else in the world.
- lukeqsee 10y agoZürich is in Switzerland. I wouldn't recommend calling them German. :)
- smallnamespace 10y agoCulturally/linguistically German/Germanic? 'The official language of Zürich is (the Swiss variety of Standard) German...' [1] Northern Switzerland was founded by Germanic tribes, after all. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z%C3%BCrich [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland#German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland#Germa...
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoWe have multiple official languages, including an Italian derivative and French. Our history is as independently rich, tracing to the Holy Roman Empire, as that of the Germanic tribes.
- gumby 10y agoAgree with the rest of your statement but not this: > this 'hydration' ritual you are theorizing. You are lucky not to have encountered the whole "hydration" fetish. It's especially bad with kids (apparently they are so busy having fun they don't notice when they are thirsty -- and this has apparently only recently developed??) and spread via parents into the workplace. part of the pathology of helicopter parenting.
- anexprogrammer 10y agoSomething that amuses me is at least two of the UK bottled water brands are selling untouched tap water. Not treated, filtered, or with additives as mentioned in the article. Just tap water put in plastic bottles. One of them was selling Manchester tap water, I think, and doing quite well with it. I can understand wanting bottled water in London where tap tastes terrible, being 80% limestone, but for the rest of the UK bottled is a pointless waste of money.
- jeff_vader 10y agoNow I want to visit Manchester and try the tap water there. I live in London and for some reason have absolutely no complaints about tap water here, I drink it all the time.
- Symbiote 10y agoI think it's just what you're used to -- I like London tap water, but dislike Manchester's water. There's a water hardness map for England (PDF): http://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/hardness_map.pdf http://www.dwi.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/hardness_map... (But you should go to Manchester anyway.)
- anexprogrammer 10y agoInteresting I'd not seen that map before.
- Buge 10y agoThe tap water in my new apartment tastes terrible. Bottled water tastes so much better. But bottled water is so inconvenient and wasteful. So I bought a pitcher with a filter, and the tap water tastes bearable after that.
- witty_username 10y ago> Nowadays people don't listen to their bodies and drink accordingly. Source?
- eveningcoffee 10y agoWhere I live, the tap water is contaminated by herbicides (measured by the government to be multiple times over the norm) from nearby agricultural activities. I prefer to drink bottled water coming from known mountain sources. Water coming from the tap is still tasty and I use it for other culinary purposes except for direct drinking.