Bottled Water or Tap?

The bottled water industry has exploded in recent years, and enjoys annual sales of more than $100 billion worldwide. Americans paid $13 billion for bottled water in 2014.

According to Co-op America, "as much as 40 percent of bottled water is actually bottled tap water, sometimes with additional treatment, sometimes not." The number one (Aquafina) and two (Dasani) top-selling brands of bottled water in the U.S. both fall in the category of purified water. Dasani is sold by Coca-Cola, while Aquafina is a Pepsi product. As U.S. News & World Report explains, "Aquafina is municipal water from spots like Wichita, Kansas."

There is a trade off with everything we choose in life and with bottled water there are several. There is an environmental issue to consider and often surprisingly a quality issue. A considerable number of used water bottles end up as litter, where they can take several hundred years or more to biodegrade. 90% of water bottles end up as either garbage or litter, at a rate of more than 200 billion bottles per year. When some plastic bottles are incinerated along with other trash, as is the practice in many municipalities, toxic chlorine is released into the air while heavy metals deposit in the ash. If plastics are buried in landfills, not only do they take up valuable space but potentially toxic additives such as phthalates may leak into the groundwater. This problem could be avoided simply by recycling used bottles regularly.

As mentioned above, some studies indicate that bottled water may be no safer, or healthier than tap water in many countries while selling for up to 1000 times the price.

There have been studies that have shown higher risk of certain diseases when regularly consuming city tap water and this is not likely to change in the near future. One of the best recommendations, and perhaps the best solution, would be the use of a home charcoal and reverse osmosis water filtration which will leave your water pure and tasting great.

This is one of the most important health habits you could possibly maintain. Water is essential and if you don't get enough clean water you will suffer health problems. Your exclusive beverage should be water. Try to have at least eight glasses of water a day.

The simple way to calculate the amount of water most of us need is to drink one half your body weight in ounces of water. The average adult is 150 pounds which would be two and one half quarts of water.

The bottom line is that you are better off not drinking unfiltered tap water. Chlorine used in most municipal purification processes is a toxic chemical and should not be consumed in large quantities. Avoid distilled water as it has the wrong ionization, pH, polarization and oxidation potentials. It will also drain your body of minerals.

When using bottled water, avoid purchasing the one-gallon cloudy plastic (PVC) containers from your grocery store as they transfer far too many chemicals into the water. The five-gallon containers and the ones in the clear bottles (polyethylene) are a much better plastic and will not give the water a plastic taste. If you have a question about the purity of the water call the company selling it and get an "independent lab assessment" of water quality and stick with the companies that can provide this information.

"About a quarter of the bottled water sold in the U.S. actually is just tap water."