Thursday, April 8, 2010

There's no poop in our water...

Bottled water companies are notorious for the multitude of reasons they use to convince consumers of the desirability of their product. The usual suspects include pictures of pristine freshwater springs -- though lots of bottled water actually comes from municipal sources; lulling descriptions of filtering processes -- "triple distilled through reverse-osmosis, oxygenization, and vapourization and cold-filtered with minerals for taste"; and report after report chastising the health risks of municipal tap water -- even though tap water is regulated to a much higher standard in much of the world.

But today I saw something I had never seen before. A particular bottled water company (whose name escapes me) had a poster up in one of Trent's cafeterias with a bountiful list of the wonderful benefits of its product. At the bottom of the list was the cartoon of a small orange fish with little drops coming out of its backside. Beside the picture read, "No fish swam here".

Wow.

I know the bottled water industry is under attack, but I've never seen anything so desperate to claim that there is no fish poop in the product, let alone that no fish swam in the source water. If there were no fish, where did they even get the water? And is there any life in the water? If not, it might be an indication that the water isn't all that healthy.

Of course, now I'll take an extremely cautious approach to any drink that is not labelled with a "no fish swam here" logo. I don't know about you, but I don't want to drink fish poop...

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