Ahhhh Water... Good ole' H2O. Two parts Hydrogen, One part Oxygen. The stuff of life. I was perusing around my local grocery store yesterday when I saw it.
The isle. THE ISLE!
You know what I'm talking about. You know that isle that you come upon in every single grocery store on god's green earth that shelve rows and rows of delectable, taste bud tingling bottles of, of, of...
Water.
Many with thirst quenching names such as Everest, Aquafina, Disante' & Evian?
Yea those.
Thats when it hit me. Are these bottles really from the heights of the mountains of Nepal or the bubbling brooks of the Yosemite mountain ranges or even exotic islands like Fiji? To answer this question I turned to the seer of all knowledge, the tome of answers, the documenter of all that is written....
The Internet.
The bottled water racket is an 8 BILLION DOLLAR A YEAR INDUSTRY! Let me say that again cause I think it's kind of important - 8 BILLION DOLLARS!!! Coke and Pepsi are actually in on the sham with their bottles of Disante & Aquafina respectively. These two companies actually managed to figure out a way to convince you to pay for the BASE ingredient of their sodas. No syrup, no citric acid, no potassium benzoate (or whatever else is in those concoctions). And guess what, YOUR PAYING MORE for their base ingredient - plain ole' water, than you'd EVER pay for the entire damn Coke or the Pepsi in the first place!! That is absolutely asinine. Am I getting through to you here?
Let's move on...
Interesting, it appears that all is not as it should be in bottled water land. There is a disturbance in the force. The first thing I noticed was that NONE of these bottles of water came from such exotic places like Nepal, Yosemite or nope. Not even Fiji. Try places like Corpus Christi, Texas or Los Angeles, California on for size. That is more truthful. Gotta hand it to those marketers. They work magic. I've gotta give kudos to the manufacturers of Everest Water though. At least they've added in fine print - "Product of Corpus Christi Municipal Water Supply" on every bottle. And let me spell it out for you just in case you don't understand what "Corpus Christi Municipal Water Supply" means. In other words, that can be translated into "Corpus Christi Municipal TAP WATER". Yet, we still buy the junk for a couple O bucks a bottle thinking we're detoxifying our bodies with those exotic Nepalese healing elixirs. And don't even get me started on this whole DETOX movement I've been catching wind of. That's a whole different post. Unbelievable...
Now let's talk ingredients.
Ingredients you ask? There aren't any ingredients in water!! Au contra'ire, I must retort. One of the main ingredients I found in most (not all) was Potassium Chloride. What is that you ask? Well in short, it's a chemical compound. Potassium chloride (KCl) is a metal halide composed of potassium and chlorine. So much for chlorine free. Oh, lets not forget some of potassium chloride's OTHER uses, fertilizer, medicines, scientific applications and my MOST favorite use of potassium chloride?
"Judicial applications"
If you need me to spell that out for you, potassium chloride is the primary juicy stuff that is injected into death row inmates in order to carry out their sentence.
'ahem'... yea.
Oh, almost forgot - It's also radioactive. Potassium chloride is useful as a beta radiation source for calibration of radiation monitoring equipment because natural potassium contains 0.0118f the isotope K40. One kilogram of KCl yields 16350 becquerels of radiation consisting of 89.28 percent beta and 10.72 percent gamma with 1.46083 MeV.
So open up that 2 dollar bottle of water and chug that good stuff down the hatch!! I'm thirsty just thinking about it!!
Okay, so on to bottled water costs.
This is my favorite part. In these uncertain times, with the economy in the shitter, people cutting back and in some cases, losing jobs entirely, we naturally begin to look around at areas in our lives where we can save a little money here and there. Funny that no one really looks at that water spigot and thinks to themselves, "hmmm.... maybe we'd save a little by drinking from that, that thingy over there". Nope. They continue to make B-lines to the store for those damned bottles (which by the way, consume way too much space in our landfills...). Let me give you a few numbers so you get an idea of the costs involved in drinking so called 'bottled water'. I got this from the New York Times - August 1st, 2007:
"Here are the hard, dry facts: Yes, drinking water is a good thing, far better than buying soft drinks, or liquid candy, as nutritionists like to call it. And almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents."
$1,400 dollars annually? Are you fracking kidding me? That figure is not a neighborhood average, not even a family average. That figure is an approximation of one single consumer thinking they are healthier than all the other idiots who drink from the tap. Hmmmm who's the idiot now? Want to save money? Yea, you know what to do.
Nope. When it comes to rehydrating this body with that ever so thirst quenching elixir of life, I'll happily guzzle down a couple of quarts of the good stuff from my own personal water repository -
THE TAP!!
Rant over...
SjN