Designer Water: Similar to Designer Jeans?

In the 21st century, it’s become chic to drink designer water, have you noticed that?  We can now choose from a wide variety of different waters…..from the springs of the Rocky Mountains all the way to the glaciers of the North Pole.  We have to decide if we want our water sparkling or flat; flavored or straight; with Splenda or sugar but certainly no High Fructose Corn Syrup, since HFCS are no longer acceptable in our society.  Do we want naturally sparkling water from some spring-fed something-or-other in France, or the non-chic & quite ordinary carbonated type, also known as seltzer?

Designer drinking water is not the same thing as designer jeans, let’s face it.  We pay a lot of money for a pair of jeans to make our butts look cute…..and that, to me, constitutes justified spending. If we lay out a load of cash for a case of water, well, that’s just a load of horse-pucky, as I see it.

Water quenches my thirst & keeps me hydrated; jeans make me look good.  DUH! I think I’ll take my drink of water from the kitchen sink & save my hard earned moolah for the perfectly fitted jeans thank-you-very-much!

Suddenly, it seems, purchasing water has become quite confusing.  Whether it’s distilled water for our garment steamers, sleep apnea CPAP machines, or ordinary drinking water, the entire H2O market has gotten quite complicated & ridiculously expensive to boot.

If I want to purchase some Evian water from France, which, by the way, spelled backwards is Naïve……..I have to spend a fortune to do so.  I wonder why my drinking water has to come from France?  Fine champagne I can understand.  But water?

If I buy a case of water at the grocery store for $3.99, I expect it to have Nutritional Information on the label of each bottle.

Nutritional Information on water?  OK, I suppose I should  make absolutely certain each bottle contains zero calories, zero grams of fat, carbs & protein….just in case that water may blow my diet, but what do they mean by ‘solid parts’ ? Should water contain ‘solid parts’ of any kind? 

For the purposes of writing this article, I fished a bottle of Arrowhead Pure Quality Water out of the kitchen garbage can here at the office. The drinker paid $1 for 20 ounces of 100% Mountain Spring Water “Only from carefully selected mountain springs” all over California. One source of this water comes from Deer Canyon Springs and/or Coyote Springs.  How, I wonder, does one go about ‘carefully’ selecting springs to draw drinking water from?  And wouldn’t coyotes & deer leave deposits in those springs that we humans would not want to drink?

Perhaps that is where the “solid parts” info comes from on the Nutritional Information?

(((((Shudders)))))

I remember watching a television show a while back about a fancy restaurant in New York City that decided to conduct a little survey about drinking water. They offered up about 12 different designer waters on their menu, ranging in price from $3 to $12 a bottle.  The waiters went out back into the alley behind the restaurant, snickering all the way, and filled up the designer labeled bottles with water from the hose. They then offered the diners 3 different ‘brands’, to see which one was preferred.  The diners, unaware of the scam, most often selected the $12 water bottle as ‘tasting best’.  When they were informed of the fact that each bottle contained the exact same water coming from the exact same hose from the back alley, well, lots of embarrassed giggling followed suit.

Was it W.C. Fields who uttered the infamous quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute”?

When I was a kid, I drank water from the hose in the yard. I could care less if the spigot was rusted or what the water tasted like or didn’t taste like…….if I was thirsty, I drank it, and, believe it or not, I’m still alive today. GASP! And, for centuries now, dogs have been drinking water from toilet bowls and they haven’t died off as a species.  Just some food for thought there…..

I read an article the other day about the growing problem with waste management of all these empty water bottles. If all our empties were laid end to end, the bottles would circle the earth twice. Hmmm. I wonder if we’re overdoing it a bit with the designer water bottle craze?

When I dined out with my daughter last week, the waiter asked us what type of water we’d prefer with our lunch.  I told him, “The free kind.”  My daughter looked daggers at me, of course, but guess what?

I. Don’t. Care.

I refuse to go to a restaurant and pay for water. I prefer to save my money for things with just a tad more value……call me crazy, it wouldn’t be the first time.

I heard my daughter discussing ‘bathroom’ water versus ‘kitchen’ water with her friends not long ago.

“How disgustingly gross is it to get a drink of water from the bathroom sink? Ewwwwwwwwwwww! I would rather die of thirst!”

Um, raising my hand here with a question:  Is there a different set of plumbing pipes leading to the bathroom than there is to the kitchen? Because if there is, I have no knowledge of it nor did I pay extra when building the house for ‘clean’ pipes leading to the kitchen versus ‘dirty’ pipes leading to the bathrooms.

“Silly children,” I told these girls, “just make sure you don’t fill your Dixie cup up from the toilet and I’m sure you’ll be ok.”  As a matter of fact, the dogs seem to be just fine in spite of not being tall enough to reach the bathroom faucet.

If you find yourself leaning towards being a Purified Water Snob, or, if you’re starting to wonder whether you should become a Purified Water Snob based on what everyone else is doing, ask yourself a question:

How are ice cubes made? As far as I know, they’re made from regular old tap water. So, even if you do drink bottled water, your iced drink still contains a bunch of cootie-filled little cubes you never even thought about until now.

Raising my glass of good old American Sink Water to let you know it’s OK to Just Say No to Nonsense!