People drink bottled water. I don't know why they want neutered water in a container that fills dumps with waste and takes water to produce the plastic. The public water system is free (relatively speaking) for everyone and good on the whole. That is for the places that are lucky enough to have clean public water. But bottled water actually threatens the public water supply and confidence.

Soda: (USA)
"Several of the nation's leading health experts are calling for a tax on soda as a means of curbing America's obesity-epidemic." on the same web page "people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events" and "...the researchers found no increased risk among people who drank regular soda."

The recent caramel coloring change because of CA potential labeling requirements. (one study on rats) According to the FDA - a person would have to drink more than 1,000 cans of pop a day to reach the doses that have shown links to cancer in rodents. Not done yet?

"Citric and phosphoric acids are the main players in tooth destruction, and are commonly used by beverage companies to artificially create the various fruit flavors." Plus the carbonation. Some other choices are worse: "The ingredients in power drinks may be two to three times as destructive as sodas," (anyone following my line of thought here? Everything is evil, we need to tax it or ban it)

Has the world gone mad with natural foods? So called organic chickens? (what are the rest, inorganic chickens?) Food labeling that is unregulated, like the word organic to start with. Wheat has been the staple to developing civilization and now it's "bad for you". Meat that's processed to remove bacteria and prevent illness is called names and there are myths and scares flooding the web. The truth remains elusive. Mad cow! Sulfides on fruits and vegetables.

Red wine is good for you. Red wine is bad for you.

Food can be irradiated to kill things in it and make it less likely to spoil. Some people believe they will be eating radiation, and are against it. Hey, by the same logic, you don't want those microwaves still swimming around in your food do you? Some folks still believe that homogenized milk is somehow different from plain old milk. Hey, it's spun, whipped and mixed, that's all.

Sugar is bad, we've had years of those claims. (The sugar high anecdotal reports which are undocumented) Fake sugar is worse. A stronger possibility than something natural like real sugar. Salt is bad. Fat is bad. Carbs are bad. "National Institutes of Health researchers showed that gluten-derived polypeptides can cross into the brain and bind to the brain�s opiate receptors. So you get this mild euphoria after eating a product made with whole wheat."

The theory that drinking eight glasses of water a day will purify your system has been refuted. Too much? �and the result is water intoxication, which produces symptoms ranging from mild headache to confusion, coma, seizures and occasionally even death.� death from water? Funny how a little bit of truth becomes a big bit of fallacy. Caffeine does cause a loss of water, but only a fraction of what you�re adding by drinking the beverage. A cup of coffee is about 2/3rd the water gain as plain water. You don't lose. You just don't gain as much.

Food fads come and go. What's odd to me is that some people go from one to another adding and leaving them behind, without somehow remembering that the last one was a myth, fraud or passing fad. Natural vitamins are unregulated, people buy them at shops where there's no control over potency. They are the same as the health and diet fads.

For a few years one will be in vogue, then it gets surpassed by something better. No studies, nothing but a friend who says, and the driving force is the people who market these potions and products. We call ourselves advanced and civilized and we're dealing with ancient myths and herbal medicines as if it's real science. Sometimes people get sick or are forever harmed by taking these earth medicines. Some of them do nothing but empty your pocketbooks. Belief is a strong medicine by itself.

Food Phobia is running wild! It has a name, should anyone care to know what it's called.  Cibophobia

I think the answer is clear. Eat nothing, don't breath the air, drink nothing. Soon all your food worries will be gone. 

I keep 1 (one) bottle of water just in case, for the time the public water tastes bad. Luckily that happens about once in a year, for the remaining 364 days I drink public water.

Anyway, drinking water is a waste in itself as it could be used to make beer.

I keep 1 (one) bottle of water just in case, for the time the public water tastes bad. Luckily that happens about once in a year, for the remaining 364 days I drink public water.

Anyway, drinking water is a waste in itself as it could be used to make beer.

Yes and for everyone else with the same situation as you, I understand. I drank the water in LA and people said "we don't do that". Same thing in Las Vegas. "People don't drink tap water here." So keep in mind I come from someplace that has nice lake and deep aquifer water. I'm obviously being regional blind to others true problems. For the rest of the world with clean water? WHY?

Yes, beer is much better, cleaner (it's been boiled) more nutritious too.

Please consider the rant about water to be only about places that have perfectly good, clean, and pure tap water. Not ugly brackish, flat, hard water... although something tells me that civilization did exist for 200,000 years and we seemed to do OK without carrying plastic bottles of something that comes out of the ground, with fancy names and high prices. Bottled water is more about fashion and marketing for some people.

Drink public water, don't drink public water 

Make up your mind people.

Found this and thought it was rather funny! 

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

Ban it all!!!!

And in the other corner:

"But all those plastic bottles use a lot of fossil fuels and pollute the environment. In fact, Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That�s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months." (National Geographic Society)

"Not only is the majority of U.S. tap water safe, but municipal water providers are required by the Safe Drinking Water Act to give their customers a "Right to Know" report that details what contaminants are in their water." Mother Nature Network

"The EPA regulates tap water, while the FDA oversees bottled. Yet FDA oversight doesn�t apply to water packaged and sold within the same state, leaving some 60 to 70 percent of bottled water, including the contents of watercooler jugs, free of FDA regulation, according to the NRDC�s report."

"In 1999 the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water. While noting that most bottled water is safe, the organization found that at least one sample of a third of the brands contained bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, in levels exceeding state or industry standards."  Readers Digest

If you like paying 1000 times more for the same water you get out of your tap and sometimes more contaminated as it's being bottled. Keep believing the marketing hype for those pretty plastic bottles, which until recently could have been contaminated with phthalates.

And in the other corner:

"But all those plastic bottles use a lot of fossil fuels and pollute the environment. In fact, Americans buy more bottled water than any other nation in the world, adding 29 billion water bottles a year to the problem. In order to make all these bottles, manufacturers use 17 million barrels of crude oil. That�s enough oil to keep a million cars going for twelve months." (National Geographic Society)

"Not only is the majority of U.S. tap water safe, but municipal water providers are required by the Safe Drinking Water Act to give their customers a "Right to Know" report that details what contaminants are in their water." Mother Nature Network

"The EPA regulates tap water, while the FDA oversees bottled. Yet FDA oversight doesn�t apply to water packaged and sold within the same state, leaving some 60 to 70 percent of bottled water, including the contents of watercooler jugs, free of FDA regulation, according to the NRDC�s report."

"In 1999 the NRDC tested more than 1,000 bottles of 103 brands of water. While noting that most bottled water is safe, the organization found that at least one sample of a third of the brands contained bacterial or chemical contaminants, including carcinogens, in levels exceeding state or industry standards."  Readers Digest

If you like paying 1000 times more for the same water you get out of your tap and sometimes more contaminated as it's being bottled. Keep believing the marketing hype for those pretty plastic bottles, which until recently could have been contaminated with phthalates.

We have a RO water filter and use stainless steel or glass water containers for sports activities.  We also make our own beer and wine so no wasted bottles or phthalates for our little brood.