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Water, water is everywhere, perhaps not what you think

When it comes to bottled water, there is more to it than you may think, and less to it than you may think.

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There's more because there is a rather elaborate regulatory framework controlling the contents and labeling of water marketed in bottles, though few consumers know that.

There's less to it in the sense that if you are drinking bottled water as an elixir, a panacea, an antidote to all sorts of unpleasant health effects, or even perceived negative effects of public drinking water, in many cases, you may be kidding yourself.

Bottled water is now so ubiquitous, it is hard to remember a time when there was no bottled water and almost as hard to remember how humorous it seemed when it first emerged. For a while there, like the Walkman and the SUV, the bottle of water invited sneers and resentment and accusations of snobbery.

That's not generally so anymore. Bottled water is everywhere, its types are quite varied, and the reasons people drink it are varied, too. Packaging is probably a key for many—plenty of people drink bottled water simply because it's in a bottle. And the convenience of a lightweight, plastic container is, for many people, the one and only selling point of the bottled water experience. They aren't thinking that the water is cleaner, purer, or more healthful than tap water. It's largely marketed together with soft drinks, so it provides consumers with an alternative to sweetened, flavored, or carbonated beverages.

Plenty of others drink it simply because they prefer the taste, which some consumers prefer to tap water, the taste of which can vary around the nation.

Then there are those who have convinced themselves that municipal tap water somewhere or everywhere is somehow toxic to them, so they avoid it and drink only from bottles.

Waters that naturally contain minerals may provide some additional health benefit over those that don't. And, given the ever-expanding realm of functional foods, resulting in more and more waters containing added nutrients or flavors, it may be harder all the time to give a single answer to the question of why people drink bottled water.

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