The beverage marketing corporation of America, is an industry-funded organization that watches trends in the bottled and canned Beverage marketplace. It’s findings are usually of interest only to Beverage bottlers, but a new survey has revealed something startling about Western drink preferences…
Whether you’re drinking ‘eau de source’ or plain old bottled Water,
you’re doing yourself in injustice.
The Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC) says that, for the first time, Americans are drinking more bottled Water than Soda/Soft Drinks. That would jive with the increased competitive behaviour among Beverage Bottlers and the proliferation of new brands and flavours of various iconic drinks. It also confirms that the bottlers are on the right track, if in catch-up mode, as they roll out more and more non-carbonated, no-coloured, non sweetened Water-like concoctions.
But the signal, to me\ at least, is that younger, more health conscious consumers are shifting their preferences massively toward Water., in the belief that it’s better for them. They’re right about that, at least in part. But they’re missing some other points that could make their lives even simpler and even healthier.
Mineral waters have a lot of stuff in them – not all good
Some mineral waters are laden with chemicals that occur naturally in the rock strata where they originate. These can include Mercury, Lead, Potassium, Iron, as well as Potassium, Iron, Calcium and other beneficial trace elements. If you drink a lot of ‘Mineral’ water, or have consumed a lot over a long period of time, you might be building potentially undesirable loads of retained Mercury and Lead in your system. These contaminants are particularly worrisome because they are not expelled from your body like other chemicals. Retained heavy metals is one reason that those who know say we shouldn’t eat certain fish, especially older, bigger ones that have had longer to build up Lead and Mercury deposits.
‘PWS’ means ‘Tap Water’
If you drink what I’ll call ‘generic’ bottled Water – stuff which isn’t carbonated and doesn’t come from any specific natural source’, you’re probably just drinking bottled Tap Water. Look at the nutrition and ingredients listings on the label. If you see ‘PWS’ there, it means that the bottler got it originally from the Public Water Source. That’s a fancy name for the tap; the same tap in your house. Yes, they filter it and expose it to UV light to get rid of any germs that might be present, but it’s still just Tap Water.
The moral of the story?
You’re better off getting your own Water filter system, whether attached to your fawcet or on a jug in your fridge. You come out ahead ion a number of important ways: You’re not ingesting harmful chemicals, you’re not wasting hundreds or thousands of dollars a year on bottled Water and you’re keeping hundreds -maybe thousands – of plastic water bottles out of the waste stream. And plastic Water bottles are among the most troubling and burdening waste products in the stream. After used Keurig pods, that is.
Go forth and take the Waters! Safely and responsibly…
~ Maggie J.