My wife spends a small fortune on the stuff and keeps cases of it around despite the fact that we have some of the most drinkable water in the country/world. She even complained that it was hurting her back to bring the cases upstairs to the kitchen.

My argument that Brita filters are both cheaper and lighter has fallen on deaf ears.

There are parts of the country with poor tasting water. It was terrible in Phoenix when I lived there, but there was an entire cottage industry of water filtration stores where you brought in your big multi-gallon bottles of drinking water to fill once or twice a week to get drinking water. It wasn't all that expensive.

I use my own well now, but my son still feels the need to hit the pile of Aquafina or whatever bottles at every chance. It's American marketing genius.

I drink from the water cooler at work because the local water has repeatedly come back with carcinogens in it (there's a lot of industry in this town). And I used to buy bottled water in college (one liter bottles) because the local water in that town had to be at least 50% chlorine, judging from the taste.

At home, though, only from the tap. Those are the only places I drink water, too. The only thing I buy in bottles anymore are soft drinks, as 99.9% of the time, those are just concentrates shipped to local bottling companies that mix it with local water and sell it. They can't do that with bottled water, though.

I wish companies could be prohibited from selling it.

I wonder about this. NYC (where I presume you live) has a reputation for having some of the best tasting water in the world.

I recall an episode of Bullsh*t devoted to debunking bottled water in which the crew fooled a restaurant full of folks by telling them that different orders of water came from exotic places when, in reality, they all came from the same garden hose behind the dumpster. I wouldn't be surprised if half the folks that complain about the taste of the water they drink would have a hard time differentiating between refrigerated tap water and bottled.

edit: doh! too slow.

Yes, in NYC, the tap water is excellent. It comes mainly from sources in Catskill Mountains, and is indeed very clean and actually tasty enough to pass for an upmarket bottled variety.

I live in North NJ, however, where water is less than ideal. Altough not overtreated with chlorine, with no turbidity, clean of pesticides runoff and industrial crap, it is nevertheless massively hard. A reverse-osmosis system takes care of that for drinking/cooking purposes. But the effect of excess calcium carbonate can be felt when showering, as well as cleaning up (ie water spots on silverware and glasses). It doesn't help the expected life and efficiency of the house appliances either.

I actually keep meaning to install a whole house softener, but I'll have to relocate the boiler and upgrade venting, so the overall cost of the project has deterred me so far.

Paleo, get this Whirlpool RO system. See if you can install it (enough space under your kitchen sink, a free faucet hole in the basin or a place to drill a hole in the countertop for the filtered water faucet, and some basic plumbing skills to install the new faucet and replace the drain tailpiece). Your missus will be very pleased.

Needless to say, many of the bottled waters come from Pepsi and Coke, and even they get the source from Tap water. Very few bottled waters come from "natural" sources.

What Paleocon said, with the difference being that *I* get to carry the stupid cases. Grr.

The big flaw in taste tests like that is that one-time initial taste, and taste over prolonged use, are two totally different things.

I can swig a glass of Fresno's EPA-admonished tap water in a pinch, and it may taste fine at first, but over time, it wears seriously thin.

Pretty much the same with whatever new gimmick soda comes out. Most of them taste alright the first time. Not so much come time #5.

I love the phrasing of "equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil"

In other news, the power my laptop consumes is equivalent to the energy generated by burning 2 million newborn babies, even though the laptop itself doesn't run on burning babies.

Yes, I assumed they were referring to the petroleum products used to make the plastic & the energy used in it's manufacture. You're obviously not burning barrels of oil to run the lights in your factory.

You wouldn't believe the number of stunned looks I've gotten from people who drink bottled water because they think it's "healthier and more pure" when I tell them that 99% of it is just filtered tap water, often just the recycled water that was used to make soda. If they say I'm joking with them, I just go "Then why are two of the biggest bottled water brands owned by Coke and Pepsi?" Always puts a smile on my face.

My girlfriend and I have a water dispenser in our house that takes those 18.5L jugs. The reason we do is because it's spring water, not filtered tap water. The municipal water here is actually pretty good but I can definitely taste a major difference which is why we like it. Plus the water coming out of it is always cold as opposed to waiting for the tap to cool off. We never buy bottled water in any other form.

Sadly, those jugs are probably a polycarbonate plastic, known to introduce the estrogen Bisphenol-A into the water, which is credited for numerous fertility issues and miscarriages, as well as hormonal issues. If the recycling symbol on the bottom of the jug contains a number 7, its a polycarbonate. This is the case with many clear, hard plastics as well.

Am I the only one that uses a Brita pitcher? A six buck filter lasts a couple of months and is really easy to carry up the stairs.

Americans got collectively hoodwinked about proper hydration. Remember the adage, "drink eight to ten glasses of water a day"? There's no real evidence we need to drink that much water at all...it's just become an 'accepted' fact that helps to sell a lot of bottled water. (Same with Gatorade and the like. Unless you're working out--hard--for about an hour and a half or two hours, your body is just fine without that stuff.)

Unlike all of you Earth killing heathens, I only drink pure rain water that has been processed through a desalinization system powered by the sun. I don't know how you all sleep at night.

Skim, skimmer, skim!!