Bottled Waters: Our Blind Taste Test

I live in Aurora, IL, a suburb of Chicago. It allegedly has the best-tasting water in the state. When I moved here 9 years ago, I endured a chlorine taste and smell for a couple of years and had a reverse osmosis filter put in. Best investment I ever made!

I believe that pure, and I mean _pure_ water(H2O), is colorless (in small quantities), odorless, and tasteless. Any color, taste, or odor is due to impurities. Therefore, your taste test is invalid unless you are willing to concede that the best tasting water is beer.

My tap water is recycled from the city upstream, and the cities downstream get what we dump back in. The smell of chlorine in the mornings is about the same as a bottle of bleach from the supermarket. It's supposedly safe, but undrinkable as it comes from the tap, even though it meets EPA standards.

Those of you in NYC or SF should consider yourselves lucky and always remember that those of us in the Deep South are drinking one anothers filtered urine. I'm partly lucky at least in being upstream. Those in Atlanta or Birmingham or downstream from there have it much worse.

However, a charcoal filter takes care of the problem, and costs much less than buying tap water from Coke or Pepsi. Drinking bottled water is just the latest in conspicuous consumption, thrust down our throats by the predatory capitalists who control the Great American profit machine we call an economy.

I'm originally from the Bay Area in California and have lived in many places. The best water by far that I have tried is the tap water in Miami. It's pumped by the local utility from a limestone aquifer more than 200 feet down, and it's delicious.

I've always drank tap water where it was bearable, even if there was slight flavor, even if people mocked me for doing it and said they'd visit me in the brain damage ward. I never cared...until it made me sick. The water where I moved to in L.A. burned the back of my throat and gave me terrible cramping, diarrhea. How do I know it was the water? The cat's diarrhea also stopped when we started giving her bottled water. This stuff scares the hell out of me, if I have to now pay for every drop of water I and my pets consume just so we won't get ill. Something is not right!

I live in the country and I have well water. Unfortunately, it has that rotten-egg smell and tastes not so good...iron-sulfide I think. The "cure" is to keep two large containers of this tap water in the frig, alternating between the two. The stuff settles out within 24 hours, and then the water smells and tastes fine. But it still doesn't "taste" as good as beer. This may work for heavily chlorinated water as well.

For those of you who have water that makes you sick, have it tested ASAP.

i dont think "statistical validity" comes into play on this water taste review, its too light hearted. likewise, i dont think calling in and saying that you live with poop water that comes out of your bath and clouds out of your faucet is helping push the discussion. if you've lived in more than like two places in your life, you will know that some townships and cities and counties and states and countries have varying degrees of tap water quality and bottled water pricing vs quality differences.

in some places, filtered tap water makes a real difference, and can have varying degrees of OK or better flavor and clouds that dissipate after ten seconds up to two minutes. when i lived in denver colorado in a particular house with bad water, i drank more bottled goodness and i tended to drink "electrolyte" water like smart-water or whole foods 365 and they tested "better" than our crappy tap. there was also a lot of reasonably priced reasonably tasting reversed osmosis water available for bulk at places like vitamin cottage. in portland oregon i think the water tastes damn good from the tap and i believe is not too highly filtered.

i think what it comes down to is quality of life for people, and how to bridge the gap between tap water and bottled, tap water costing so low per gallon and having a tiny CO2 Print and yet seemingly beyond personal decision control save having the means to find and live somewhere with higher quality tap, ie gentrification/class/poverty issues potentially, meanwhile plastic seems a ludicrous price and isn't necessarily better quality water, yet has the potential to reduce some of the water waste that MOJO often derides, ie if water costs more it is used more sparingly and smartly.

obviously bottled water currently is not playing well in our "ethically environmental" mind frames, but people should be able to just purchase a standard quality of pure water in a size container they need for whatever they do at the office (a 2 liter day bottle? ) or on the road (a six pack of 8 oz bottles?) or at home (filtered through a home filtration and or delivered in large jugs @ 50 cents a gallon?) or jogging or biking or whatever, and dump it in a bin where they know it will get reused or recycled 100%.

someone show me a business model, please, lets get creative with this.

I recently bought a 'Clear2Go' filter that has a replaceable filter that fits inside the BPA-free plastic bottle. It is good for 100 gallons (!!!) or 797 standard water bottles. The water is delicious, super clean and for the $15, it is almost free. Stop polluting our environment with plastic water bottles!!!

My favorite is Blue Delta Water for the taste and benefit. www.bluedeltawater.com

I really enjoyed reading the story on Fiji Water in MoJo when I got the magazine in my hands, but between the sidebar presented there and this blog entry the entire affair is looking like a good excuse to advertise for Whole Foods. I know it's not the magazine's intent, but if you're going to name Whole Foods you should at least name the bodega, or don't name either.

I guess I need new pipes older home. Water just taste BAD. My buddy just built his home next to me his water is great. My personal fav is aqua panna.

Thanks,
Chad

Well of course San Franciscans enjoy one of the cleanest, most uncontaminated, best tasting water - their water comes straight from Hetch Hetchy, in Yosemite. I live in Sonora, quite close to Yosemite, and we don't even get that water! I can't even drink mine from the tap.