There’s an apocryphal story of a woman who attended her first Weight Watchers follow-up meeting and said, “I’m having trouble with the 68 bottles of water a day.” Poor lady. She had heard the instructor wrong at the previous meeting. Six to eight bottles. That’s the range she was told (which, by the way, is apocryphal in and of itself).
It’s been over ten years since Lewis Black thoroughly and hilariously (and with an abundance of expletives!) covered the topic of bottled water. Yet we’re still unnecessarily buying it, paying a lot of money and using a lot of energy to package, transport and refrigerate it. And then we’re polluting the planet even more when the bottles wind up in landfills or the ocean.
It’s crazy, especially when you consider that tap water is safe to drink in almost all parts of the country.
Yet it seems there are more varieties of bottled water than ever: mineral water, spring water, distilled water, purified, vitamin-infused, ionized …
Soon they’ll sell us expensive ice by calling it “frozen concentrated water.”
Or maybe they’ll sell us condensed water. Just add … water! (Half-filled bottles you simply fill up at the tap!?)
Instead of coffee houses we’ll have water houses where you can order a tall half reverse-osmosis-filtered vitamin E-infused sparkling Aquafina and half distilled Artesian kiwi-infused Deep Rock with 3 squirts of O2 and a double shot of Fiji with an Evian magnesium mineral boost all over Dasani ice cubes … nonfat … no whip.
One of the more ludicrous options is oxygenated water. Our lungs are great at obtaining oxygen, folks. Our digestive tracts, not so much. Unless you’ve developed gills in your stomach, I’d save the water for your pet fish.
And speaking of our pets, there’s actually water specifically formulated to appeal to our four-legged friends. “But Dr. Brad,” you may say, “my dog drinks out of the toilet!” Indeed. Yet people buy this stuff.
Come to think of it, maybe all this nonsense started with toilet water (“eau de toilette”) … for which we pay good money to spray on ourselves! “If they’ll do that,” said the marketers, “let’s sell them a bunch of bogus waters to drink, too!”
So, unless you’re in Flint, MI, feel free to go straight to the tap for your 68 (or six to eight) glasses a day. Otherwise you’re just flushing away your money in the water closet.
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The Healthy Humorist®—Brad Nieder, MD—is a doctor, funny speaker and clean comedian who believes laughter is the best medicine ... unless you have giggle bladder incontinence. Dr. Brad dispenses healthcare humor with wellness advice and an uplifting message to audiences across the country. (www.healthyhumorist.com, (303) 364-9061, www.facebook.com/healthyhumorist, @HealthyHumorist)