Drinking bottled water

I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool user of bottled water and Fiji was my favorite of all, although it was usually a bit more expensive that the others on the shelf - with good reason it turns out. This article has, perhaps, one of the best summaries of the industry that I have seen. If you happen to have tasted San Diego's water, you would understand a lot of the affinity for bottled water. Now days, I buy my water from a local water store (The Water Lady) in a 2.5 gallon re-usable bottle. I use that water daily for brewing coffee and in anything that water plays an important part - like rice. At 30 cents a gallon, it is far cheaper than any of the stuff that is locally available - barring those quarter a gallon dispensers that are outside most grocery and liquor stores.

The Water Lady uses several techniques with her water - the standard RO and ultra-violet exposure, yada, yada. She may still challenge you to bring in your water and directly compare it to hers (although I haven't checked up on that in years) and I took in a bottle of Fiji. Oh well, Fiji did look really great in the bottle - but that was the bottle, but to the taste, it was not worth its hyper-priced premium of the time. One thing I do like about her store is that when you are cycling past, you can fill up the standard cycling water bottles free - well at least a couple of them. I wouldn't want anyone going by with dozens stuffed in every nook and cranny of their lycra togs expecting to fill all.

Now, if memory serves, Consumer's Report used to run a tasting test of several bottled waters against a standard - NYC muni tap water, and time and time again, the tap water came out on top, sooooooo, if that holds true today, all you New Yorkers who are drinking bottled water are pissing your money down the toilet - but hey, what else is new?

But, here is the real question on my mind - children's dental health? Most muni water sources are treated with some type of fluoride that is supposed to be beneficial to teeth - please no conspiracy theories here, and my question is with so many young children now drinking water without the fluoride treatments, will the once-a-year dental cleaning and treatment be enough to stave off a dental epidemic in the future?

Time will tell.