A Galaxy Of Bottled Drinking Water

Buying bottled drinking water is comparable to buying a car. You can go cheap and reliable with grocery store tap water, or you can pay the big bucks for the bottled spring water or even bottled mineral water like the famous Perrier. But whatever you choose, however fancy it is, it's all just one thing: plain old natural H2O. It's what humans are geared for, so it's perfect for our drinking needs.

What's the difference, then?

Not much, actually. Pure water has no flavor; that's why distilled and filtered drinking water tastes, at best, like the container it's bottled in. It's the trace elements, especially in spring water, that provide unaltered bottled water with its flavors. Of course, a few enterprising companies offer flavored water of varying quality, but that kind of defeats the health purposes, doesn't it?

What are my bottled water choices?

What aren't your choices? Every store offers drinking water in many forms, some claiming to be from natural underground springs, some from melted mountain snows, some from plain municipal water supplies. Spring water or not, it's good for you, and though you can pay just about as much as you'd like for it, most bottled water is fairly cheap.

Is spring water better than plain bottled water?

It usually tastes better, but that's a relative thing. Spring water is cleaned up but otherwise is sold in its natural form as it comes from the ground. Plain distilled, filtered, and ozonated water is uniformly bland, though you needn't worry about unwelcome additions. Fortunately, it's easy enough to find bottled water (spring and otherwise) from all over the world!