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Consumers Don't Buy Water for Health Reasons
NEW YORK - Many people seem to have a vague notion that bottled water is healthier than tap, but it is not a major reason that they buy it, a small study finds.
Bottled water are arranged on a cart in New York in this June 14, 2009 file photo.
(REUTERS/Eric Thayer) UK researchers found that among the 23 gym-goers they interviewed, many thought that bottled water was more "pure" and healthful than tap water. But they were hard-pressed to come up with any specific health benefits.
And when it came to their motivations for buying bottled water, health reasons were not at the top of the list. Instead, taste, convenience and cost were more important in study participants' decisions to buy or not to buy, the researchers report in the online journal BMC Public Health.
Consumer demand for bottled water has been steadily rising over the past decade, and health concerns are often assumed to be a driving force, according to Lorna A. Ward and colleagues at the University of Birmingham.
However, their findings suggest that is not the case, the researchers say.
And research suggests that consumers may be right to retain some skepticism about the health advantages of bottled water. About 25 percent of bottled water comes from municipal water supplies, making it essentially repackaged tap water. Studies have also found that, like tap water, bottled varieties sometimes contain chemical and bacterial contaminants.
In the current study, participants typically viewed bottled water as more "pure" than tap, but mostly could not name specific health advantages. When they did, they most often cited bottled water's higher mineral content versus tap water -- which, Ward's team notes, is true of some brands of mineral water, but not all.
17 Comments so far
Show AllMy grocery store has an entire aisle devoted to selling tap water - which I never buy.
A well known company bottles water from a "spring" in Maine which gets it water from the seepage of an old potato field. Who knows what chemicals were sprayed there. But they assure us that the water is tested and meets government regulations.
Any water free from bacteria and some toxic contaminants would too expensive to buy.
Depends on the tap water! If it has chlorine added, or travels through rusty pipes or stinks and is full of solids. I'll pass.
The best water I ever tasted was untreated well water!
I get Reverse Osmosis water for .25 to .35 cents per gallon and refill my jug.
The problem is the BOTTLE and the shipping of water around the country.
Water belongs to everybody, and should be shared and used wisely, but it is privatized and sold for profit in a careless manner that wastes it passing on the cost to the consumer.
Water is MORE valuable than oil!
Actually the biological overgrowths in old cast-iron water mains are beneficial to water quality. Pittsburg's city-run water system with it's antiquated pipes is superior in taste to the awful privatized water system in the southern suburbs.
Similar growths coating the unlined New York water supply tunnels - bored through rock all the way from the Catskills, are why NYC has the best tap water in the world.
The best water I've ever had is the slightly reddish tannin-stained water from the ice-cold creeks draining the high spruce-bogs in parts of WV. Similar Juniper-bog water from the Virginia Dismal Swamp was coveted by sea captains for long trips at sea.
an important fact is omitted from this article...bottled water is not considered 'water' from a commercial standpoint, so is not held to the same standards as municipal water (unless it happens to be municipal water, of course)...bottled water is considered 'food', and held to those standards, which are lower, and less frequently applied, than the standards for water...got that? chances are that your tap water is actually healthier than the bottled water...the EPA tests municpal water, the FDA is responsible for bottled...
Could it be that the lack of public space (and public fountains) is part of the reason for the increase in plastic containers? Perhaps Obama needs to look at a "public water option."
a couple of years ago, my place of business constructed an entire new wing, and I was going through the just-completed area prior to occupation as part of my role...I was thirsty, and didn't see a fountain, so I asked the general contractor...he gave me a quizzical look, then said: nobody ever thought of that!
There you go...
Ray Berthiaume
Memphis has some of the best water in the world. Strange to say, our city bottles this water but only after removing all the beneficial minerals! And Memphians still buy bottled water.
This article is questionable on a couple of counts.
First: any "study" which includes just 23 people is useless. It says absolutly nothing about general public perception.
Second: the author admits that the public has a "vague notion" that bottled water is healthier, but fails to mention that MUCH of the advertising done by bottled water companies actually insinuates just that. Advertising by certain companies has included information about tainted public water systems without actually saying that the bottled water is better, but the implication can not be missed.
Last: the author states that the demand for bottled water has "been steadily rising over the past decade".... not quite the truth. Bottled water, although having a dramatic rise at the earlier part of the past decade, has shown a flattening of demand and in some markets a slight decline in demand within the past two years. The European plastics industry announced last month that they expect a decline in demand in the future, largly because of a shrinkage in the demand for bottled water.
I realize that this report is of a "study" in England, but I suspect that if asked, the average American consumer of bottled water would believe that the product is healthier than tapped, in large because of distorted advertising. The truth is that bottle water is no healthier and causes a lot of pollution in it's packaging and transporting. There is a groundswell of activity against bottled water here in the United States and in Canada, and I hope that citizens take the time to educate themselves on this issue.
Youtube -> Penn & Teller: The truth about bottled water
We are being conditioned to buy water. Soon the corporations will control the water resources of this planet. They are buying water rights all over this country and the world. When the water is controlled then so is the population
re the ongoing debate concerning enhanced interrorgation techniques:
has anyone considered the possible health benefits of using exclusively bottled water for waterboarding?
More minerals in bottled water? I don't believe it. I don't buy bottled water to drink but I did buy a bottle of Dasini (I think that's how you spell coke's water product) and tested the total dissolved solids in it. (TDS, which is one way to measure minerals).
The test came out to about 33 ppm (parts per million), which is extremely low. I suspect coke runs their water through an RO (reverser osmosis) as it is about impossible to find water with that low of TDS anywhere in nature.
I live on a farm and my well water contains over 2000 PPM. It is so high in minerals (TDS) it is not healthy to drink (too much sodium and iron, etc). I bought a RO filter for $250 and installed it myself. Now my water is about 100 ppm TDS. RO filters also take out bacteria, viruses, and chlorine. Typically, RO filters remove about 95% of the TDS in water. They are the best kept secret from a public that is purchasing bottled water.
Also, you can buy TDS testers for about $15.
Selling bottled water to the public is a scam that should rank right up their with credit card scams, fraudulent mortgages, and credit default swaps. Every time I go to the grocery I see people hauling cases and cases of bottled water to their cars. It doesn't make sense. For a minimal investment in an RO filter, they could have just as good or better water coming out of their tap. The return on investment for some people would be huge!
cost and convenience???
lol...i don't know what kind of communities they live in, but tap water's been very cheap, here, forever and going to the store for bottled water's more of a pain in the butt than grabbing a glass out of my cupboard and turning on my faucet. for me, cost and conveneince wouldnt even enter into my buying water from any store.
Drinking bottled water feeds into an unconscious phobia about the need for "pure" water. The problem, and the irony, about water is that it's very complex while being such an ostensibly simple molecule. People intrinsically know this. What with its memory-shaping properties and being the only vital ingredient in the maintenance of all forms of life. Water that sits unadulterated in jars for extended periods (decades) turns "stale" and we all know that standing by a streaming waterfall generates that sense of "frisch" we all get from the ions streaming off.
In a world where millions of people have no access to water at all or access to extremely contaminated and dirty water, i have always found it appalling that some people here in the US refuse to drink tap water for "health" reasons. And why does taste matter at all? It's water. Get over it.