Why you drink bottled water
When I was a kid, America considered bottled water froufrou—a European luxury.
Now many people prefer bottled water. They don’t see it as an inessential luxury. They believe it’s healthier.
Yet, as a population, we’re less healthy than then. As a nation, our land and water is less pure and less clean than then.
Why you drink bottled water
How do you explain people thinking they’re healthier when they aren’t?
Simple: the bottled water companies market better than people think for themselves.
We don’t realize it. On the contrary, most people would probably say that marketing doesn’t affect them.
But consider this: if people believe something is healthier—healthier than what?
What are they comparing bottled water to?
Partly to tap water, but studies show tap water healthier than bottled, with rare exception, which are known. It certainly pollutes more so isn’t healthy when the plastic infects the food supply.
The answer is that they’re most comparing it to soda, sweetened drinks, juice, and other empty calorie drinks.
They’re saying it’s healthier than soda. As a culture, we’ve accepted that soda is a standard—that is, normal.
The marketers won!
As a culture, we believe that soda is normal and water is a healthy alternative.
Some results:
- Impoverishing people paying for something that’s free
- Ignorance about health, purity, and pollution
- This:
Read my weekly newsletter

On initiative, leadership, the environment, and burpees
I enjoyed listening to One part plant podcast April 2018 “Episode 103: Brain Health + Alzheimer’s Prevention + Eating For Cognitive Power” with guest Dr. Lisa Mosconi, Associate Director of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC)/NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, who spoke about the importance of drinking good water. She said If choosing to drink bottled water, choose spring water.
I didn’t think to include the Story of Bottled water video, which I did
https://youtu.be/Se12y9hSOM0
I find it compelling. A quick search found that WebMD https://www.webmd.com/women/safe-drinking-water#1 and Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/should-you-drink-tap-or-bottled-water compel me to tap water.
Besides water taste and safety, where tap water seems to have the advantage, I couldn’t live with myself responsible for producing all that garbage. To each his or her own.
Great post Josh. Marketing has a huge influence (it is a great educational model). From my experience, tap water is delicious, cheap, and that it comes out of the tap upon demand is a blessing that we may not always have available. And… NYC tap water has the highest rating of drinkable water. Go NYC!
For a New England person to say Go NYC means he means it!
I added the Story of Bottled Water video to the post since you read it. I recommend watching it.