Bottled Water Costs 141X As Much As Tap, But Half Of Those Taste-Tested Couldn't Tell Them Apart

[hatrack]

NO MAJOR sporting event goes by without close-up shots of competitors throwing their heads back and quenching their thirst with prominently displayed bottles of water from some remote fiord or spring. But a survey released today by the watchdog magazine Which? reveals half of consumers cannot taste the difference between bottled and tap water. And 18 per cent of the 3,039 people who took part in a blind-tasting preferred the flavour of tapwater.

But there are signs that the cost of bottled water is turning buyers off. Consumers in the UK spent £1.68 billion buying 2.275 billion litres of bottled water in 2006. The best-selling mineral water, Evian, will set you back some 31p a litre, while tap water costs an average of 0.22p a litre – 141 times cheaper.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed by Which? said they were drinking less bottled water than they did a year ago, while separate research in April, by the retail analyst TNS, found sales were down 9 per cent last year.

Neil Fowler, the editor of Which?, said: "There are plenty of good reasons for choosing tap water. You can save money, it's better for the environment and it can taste just as good – if not better. "The UK has some of the safest and best-quality drinking water in the world. It's time we started appreciating it." According to Which?, the bottled-water production process wastes an estimated two gallons of water for every gallon purified to put into a bottle.

EDIT

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/It39s-141-times-dearer-than.4319073.jp

[DS1]

1. My tap water is awful

but I use a Britta filter. Unlike the morons upstairs who buy cases of bottled water for indoor use. I hate them so much.

[Warpy]

2. I can't say I hate them, but I do hate the foolishness

of paying for something they can get out of a tap and run through a filter.

I'll be glad when the silly designer water fad dies.

FWIW, the few times I've been on the run and thirsty and bought a bottle of water, it's been the ultra filtered tap water. Turns out in blind tasting, it always wins over the pricey foreign stuff.

This will always be looked back on as a mind bogglingly silly age. Bottled water will probably tie with the current administration as proof we collectively took leave of our senses.

[kestrel91316]

4. Same here. Supposedly LA's water is the best city water in taste tests,

but I can't stand the chlorine taste, and I hate finding the clumps of white stuff when my ice cubes melt. I use Britta filtration for all my consumption/cooking.

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. New York City always scores well

but that's because they get all of their water from us in upstate.
http://www.observer.com/2008/good-news-about-new-york-citys-water

However, after talking to some researchers, I distrust fluoridation.
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11571

[XemaSab]

3. I've only lived in one area where the water was undrinkable

Oakhurst, California.

Even though I know people who swear up and down that the EPA standards for Uranium in water are very conservative, and drinking water that has three times the allowable amount won't hurt you, I don't care to take my chances. :o