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Silicon Valley elites spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of unfiltered water
- pjrule 9y agoNatural selection at work? ;)
- sergers 9y agoIs the 60$ for a single guy trekking to a spring and filling these manually, and carrying them back? Seems outrageous. Nestle pays 2$ per million litres of water to extract. I might aswell get a friend in the interior to goto a stream and start shipping mason jars of water lol. I am in BC, we drink tap. We bottle our tap water for on the go. Alot of people prefer bottled water. Surprisingly alot of people prefer Costco Kirkland bottled water over other name brand crap like Fasano, nestle etc.
- Havoc 9y ago>"It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery," Singh said. haha wow. That sentence says it all.
- Faaak 9y agoI have to agree that it's some sort of good (alternative) marketing
- api 9y agoIs this the final self-parody phase of the great "natural" fad? Wait no. Organic salt. First person to market that gets really rich.
- pc86 9y agohttps://www.seasalt.com/organic-salt https://www.seasalt.com/organic-salt
- tootie 9y agoI once acquired a bag of sugar that branded itself as "Carbon-free". No joke. I'm not sure how it stayed solid.
- autokad 9y agoas people mentioned below, theres 'sea salt'. i like how they are calling sugar "cane sugar", as if the sugar everyone else is using is not coming from sugarcane.
- addicted 9y agoThe vast majority of sugar in the US at least is from corn.
- unclenoriega 9y agoWhile high-fructose corn syrup is a widely-used sweetener in the US, I don't think most people would call it sugar.
- patmcc 9y agoSugar beets account for about 20% of sugar production, so it's not unlikely you've had non-cane sugar. Still no real reason to label it as cane sugar though.
- aaxa 9y agoIt's not. A lot of sugar comes from sugar beets
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pmlnr 9y ago"cane sugar" is cane sugar, because sugar can come from a few sources, including cane and beet. Most of the white sugar you know is either from cane or beet and it's generally glucose. Another sugar, fructose, is fruit sugar, or grape sugar, which is dextrose - they are all "sugar". Indicating the (near) exact type of sugar is not a bad idea.
- unclenoriega 9y agoCane or beet sugar is sucrose, not glucose (although glucose is a constituent of sucrose.)
- hprotagonist 9y agoBecause the pure, natural minerals i want in my water include arsenic, and the pure natural "living" water i want includes Giardia lamblia...
- Merad 9y agoYou have to admit, it’s a brilliant business strategy. First you rip them off with all natural raw water, then you rip them off with all natural dysentery treatments, then the few who are really fools can probably be ripped off again for an all natural raw wood pine box (coffin).
- fragsworth 9y agoI know it sounds ridiculous, but let's play devil's advocate for a moment: We've evolved drinking "dirty" water until very recent history. It might be that there are some unknown negative effects that come from drinking filtered/purified water. Or some unknown positive health effects of drinking unfiltered water. It's slowly coming out that modern medicine occasionally gets things wrong and we have to correct our intuitions (sugars, fats, sun exposure), but if you think from a simple evolutionary perspective, these things often make a lot of sense. I'm not drinking unfiltered water, but there's some potential rationale behind it.
- katrielalex 9y agoWe evolved dying of dystentery in our very recent history too.
- noahlt 9y agoYou have to account for the fact that before modern filtration civilizations developed other ways to make water safe to drink, like brewing beer and boiling water for tea.
- pmlnr 9y agounfiltered water => worms, bacteria, death especially if you're in the warmer zone of the Earth.
- eganist 9y ago> I'm not drinking unfiltered water, but there's some potential rationale behind it. There's also a potential basis for that increasing trend-line for life expectancy... well, up until the last two years, anyway. :o)
- 21 9y agoSo, we already have organic soap, probably also toothpaste, raw milk is a thing, as is bottled mountain air. What about raw clothes? Growing 3-4 sheeps, getting the fur, and making some clothes with medieval technology. But because we're not savages, let's leave the leather products out. Throw in some natural colorants and "no chemicals" anywhere. I bet you could sell this stuff for some real money.
- username223 9y ago> bottled mountain air I had to look that one up, but yes, it is real. This is also artisanal air, made with love: "It's a long and tedious process, you know. We sit in Banff for about 10 hours capturing the air and then after that we bring it back and we have to fill it into these bottles individually." -- http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-company-bottling-air-from-canadian-rockies-and-selling-it-worldwide-1.3206226 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-company-bottli...
- m00s3 9y agoObligatory: http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/719509-reaction-images http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/719509-reaction-images Cholera is natural too.
- sebasmurphy 9y agoThey won't have to worry about hep a since they all got vacinated. oh wait....
- megaman22 9y agoWow. I predict a coming rash of beaver fever. I've drunk out of a few mountain streams from time to time, but I wouldn't make a habit of it.
- thisisit 9y ago> People — including failed startup Juicero's cofounder Doug Evans — are gathering gallons of untreated water from natural springs, venturing out onto private property by night to get the water. I am wondering, are there any rules/regulations for drawing water from a natural resource and selling it commercially? Because if there aren't any, wont that that lead to exploitation.
- VectorLock 9y agoAsk Nestlé.
- davidw 9y agoWater rights are a pretty settled and old bit of law in the western US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_law_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_law_in_the_United_States
- 659087 9y ago> Juicero's founder, Doug Evans, is a fan of raw water. Of course he is. Maybe he can "pivot" to selling a machine that squeezes "live water" out of used sponges.
- kneel 9y agoSome people will always find something to be fussy about. Especially so in SV where you have neurotic programmers that can't find any more problems to solve.
- jbob2000 9y agoI am not a doctor, but wouldn't drinking unfiltered water stress your kidneys?
- tzs 9y agoNew York City tap water was unfiltered until recently, so I'd guess if it was a problem for kidneys we'd have heard about it. Note that I said unfiltered, not untreated. It was treated with ultraviolet, chlorine, fluoride, orthophosphate (inhibits lead contamination from pipes) and sodium hydroxide (reduces acidity).
- microcolonel 9y agoGood, thank goodness for private healthcare, it means that it's none of your bloody business what delicious arsenic-laced dysentery factory anyone wants to ingest.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoUntil the idea captures attention of some marketing people, who will spread the fad further, and suddenly your mother is drinking arsenic-laced dysentery by gallons, based on recommendation of her friend or the most recent article she read on the Internet.
- microcolonel 9y agoYou know what else is full of arsenic? Rice, especially brown rice, and especially American brown rice. Lots of people are telling your mother to eat brown rice, and I don't see you all up in arms.
- dpflan 9y agoThe article is summarized by the its title and the concluding sentence: "Silicon Valley elites are spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of dangerous, unfiltered water — and it's flying off the shelves" ... "You can't stop consenting adults from being stupid," Marler said. "But we should at least try." How did this diet trend start?
- rch 9y agoThe full glass jug is $60; refills are $15. That's expensive, but probably in line with what people are willing to pay for smaller plastic bottles of water.
- crorella 9y ago"Silicon Valley idiots spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of unfiltered water" - fixed
- j_s 9y agoIn case you missed the discussion of the source NYT article 3 days ago: Unfiltered Fervor: The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16040540 >dankohn1: Yes, the founder of Juicero has re-emerged: After his juicing company, Juicero, collapsed in September, he went on a 10-day cleanse, drinking nothing but Live Water. “I haven’t tasted tap water in a long time,” he said.... “You have to be agile and tactile, and be available to experiment,” he said. “Literally, you have to carry bottles of water through the dark.”
- CPLX 9y ago"You can't stop consenting adults from being stupid," Marler said. "But we should at least try."
- josefresco 9y agoI agree that this new "product" is complete BS - but I don't and will not hesitate to drink from naturally occurring springs.
- resonanttoe 9y agoSo the headline here had me focus on something that annoyed me. Oh and I should say, I'm neither Silicon Valley based or elite or interested in water beyond the normal scope of human survival :P The implication "Silicon Valley elites" and that wonderful play in to confirmation bias that they're all out of touch, cash flushed weirdos, like that's just something people kind of want to believe especially in comment sections with article like these. And ok so I'm not setting out to disprove this, but this article and the one it links doesn't do the opposite either. It makes some really spurious claims. 1. I'm going to ignore the price thing here, because it seems to be heavily reliant on one store just arbitrarily jacking up the price. 2. Silicon valley elites = The Juicero guy. And pretty much only the Juicero guy. He's the only one named and the only one that talks about it to anyone. There is a landscaper from Emeryville, but I'm going to claim that "elite" is probably not something they're going for. 3. "Flying off the shelves" The atribution for this is one store in San Deigo that opened three years ago. It's heavily dependent on these two paragraphs "And Liquid Eden, a water store that opened in San Diego three years ago, offers a variety of options, including fluoride-free, chlorine-free and a “mineral electrolyte alkaline” drinking water that goes for $2.50 a gallon. Trisha Kuhlmey, the owner, said the shop sells about 900 gallons of water a day, and sales have doubled every year as the “water consciousness movement” grows." 4. You can find "movements" for anything. Both articles talk about "raw" water movement like its this huge thing that is sweeping the bay area and will consume you all. So I'm not saying this is definitely wrong, but it just looks like that business insider took one article of little value and several barely linked claims to come up with the title of "Silicon Valley elites are spending $60 for less than 3 gallons of dangerous, unfiltered water — and it's flying off the shelves" I mean the concept is stupid, but the articles talking about it doesn't feel like its doing much better.
- desireco42 9y agoIf they are drinking pure water from the well or spring, provided it was taken in pristine environment, it should be better then regular "clean" water. That is what concept of "mineral water" is, you get water directly from the ground, usually with some health benefits. Sometimes you get 'mineral water' packaged from retailer, but if you go to place where it originates, you can get it from the well. Microelements you get in that water is something you will not ever get in regular water and it is good for your body and brains, within reason. Drinking it exclusively will not be good for your kidneys I guess, but it is not intended for that. I wish reportes would not hype this as much and explain if there is genuine issue in how this water is getting collected, there might be genuine issues, but it is hard to understand where the problem is and this is not the first article I read.
- samfriedman 9y agoI wonder if there's a market for a company that analyzes the mineral makeup of different cities'/regions' tap water, and sells an on-faucet water softener/filter that can be configured with different "mineral pods" to match the water taste of your preferred region. New Yorker living in Texas? Don't worry, you can still get that great NY Watershed taste coming right from your tap!
- faramarz 9y agoIt's Spring Water! believe it or not people around the world with access to Spring Water have been drinking for years. Canada has an incredible density of springs. What's stupid is how it's turning into a fad. haha My dad get a kick out of this.
- srslack 9y agoThe only water available to me is well water and I do prefer to fill up several Aquatainers at a local spring, but it's just water to me. There are seasons where the springs around me appear to "flunk" the drinking standards compared to treated, but not to a level where there's levels of ecoli, giardia, etc. Check for standing water around the site, research tests or get it tested yourself, spring water is fine, but obviously I wouldn't recommend anyone who's elderly or vulnerable to disease to drink from any random "spring." It's quite puzzling to see the rich paying out the ass for something those without municipal water, and the poor, have ritualized and get for free. I'm sure there's public access and tested springs only a quick drive from San Jose, so it is amusing.
- tzs 9y agoWait...does this mean people would pay a lot for the unfiltered, untreated water that comes out of my well?
- theptip 9y ago> Rainbow Grocery was sold out of its Fountain of Truth spring water Although it's currently the zeitgeist to mock "Silicon Valley elites" at every opportunity, Rainbow Grocery in SF is cut from the same cloth as Berkeley Bowl in the East Bay, i.e. serving the wealthy hippies that have lived in Berkeley (and to a lesser extent the rest of the Bay) for many decades. Some of those made their money from tech in SV, many did not. While I'm sure the author had a fit of ecstasy when they found that the Jucero CEO was a fan of this product, this really has little to do with "Silicon Valley elites"; this is the same extreme hippie contingent that oppose vaccination (the hint is in the product name: "Fountain of Truth" is clearly marketed at spritualists not technologists).
- maury91 9y agoI spent nearly all my life drinking raw water, and my parents before me, also the entire population of the village I'm born, and no one ever got any disaese like collera or epatite, we use to drink tap water from the village fountain, or go to the mountain to take the tap water from there (because it taste better). I'm. Not saying raw water is safe, but some sources of raw water are proved safe. And pay for raw water is definitely stupid, we drink it because is free
- rpedela 9y agoWater from a mountain spring or creek tends to be clean enough to drink. I personally never treat the water if I am in the mountains and far from civilization (live in Colorado) even though there is still a chance I could get sick. However I will always treat that same water with iodine if it is sitting in a lake/pond or close to civilization because the likelihood of disease goes up significantly.
- nunez 9y agoIsn’t raw water basically rainwater?