For years we’ve heard there’s a fixed quantity of water we should drink every day.
It turns out it was just a marketing ploy by companies that sell bottled water. We guess it goes to show that if you can’t trust people who’ll sell you a plentiful, virtually free substance for a buck-fifty a bottle, you just can’t trust anyone these days.
If you think about it, it does seem a little suspicious. Most of us live in places where the water from the faucet is pure, tastes good, and is fortified with fluoride. So why would we need to purchase our water in bottles from some company?
Not surprisingly, this was what the water bottling companies were asking themselves, too. In response, they came up with a great way to keep people buying their product by claiming that every person needed to force down at least eight glasses or six conveniently sized, easy-tote bottles every day.
It was brilliant marketing in that it sounded reasonable enough. People bought the theory so thoroughly that most of us now intrinsically believe there is some fixed dose of water we need to guzzle daily to stay healthy.
It turns out, though, that all we really need is to make sure we drink when we’re thirsty, the exact advice our mothers, our bodies, and our common sense have been giving us for years.
It’s not that bottles of water aren’t convenient, but tap water will do the same thing, besides being cheaper, readily available, and fluoridated for healthy teeth.
Furthermore, you know the sourcesomething you can’t always bank on with the bottled variety.
Test your tap water using chemistry before you say it’s the same as bottled water. Also test your brand of bottled water. Some brands are just tap water, but not all. Chemists have found traces of arcenic and other pollutants in tested tap water. Test your tap water for cholorine. I tested mine in Fort Lauderdale with my pool test kit. There was lots more chlorine in my drinking water than is considered safe in my pool.