| Summer is now in previews, with a few spring days that were so hot and muggy that just walking out the door made you feel like you were being breathed on by a giant dog. It's only a matter of weeks now before the temperatures tease their way up into the 90s. Soon newscasters all over Florida will be telling us what a hot one it was today, and if you don't want to fall over like a sack of potatoes be sure to drink plenty of water (and in other news, sleep when you're tired and eat when you're hungry).
Bottled water will be a lot of people's preference, despite the fact that paying for the world's most prevalent, tangible resource is pretty idiotic. That said, I can be seen out there like every other gullible mug toting around that half liter of Aquafina like a security blanket. As a born-and-raised American, happy to be part of the consumer culture, I'm a sucker for packaging, content in my belief that if it's not packaged, it's not safe. You've heard the joke before: Evian spelled backwards is Naive. This irony hasn't stopped it from selling, or me from buying.
Cold hard facts
But the people who tilt back bottled water to avoid the lesser quality of tap water or the calories and chemicals in sodas might do a spit take when they hear about a report done by a Swiss scientist. The Cosmiverse website (cosmiverse.com/science) reports that Christian Beuret of the Cantonal Food Laboratory has, along with his colleagues, concluded that "just less than half" of 29 brands of European bottled mineral water tested by the group were found to contain contaminates, namely, the "Norwalk-like virus," which causes stomach aches. Where do the bad bacteriums come from? Get this: "Apparently, at some point human feces are coming in contact with the water ... it is not known if the problem is at the water's source or introduced further down the line during processing." Funny, the whole reason people buy bottled water is because it doesn't taste as crappy as tap.
No brands were mentioned, and this study was done on European water, ...
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