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Comment by hcarvalhoalves | Hacker News Reader

Choosing between bottled water or soda/beer is the false dichotomy. Bottled water wasn’t mass produced prior the 90s, but started being heavily promoted since Pepsi and CocaCola would go out of business with people cutting back soda consumption.

I’m amazed how well their marketing worked to convince people that water is literally toxic unless it comes bottled.

I have a funny story: I went to a place here in the country with natural mineral water springs, the absolute purest water dripping straight from the rock - but visitors (US and Europe) not only requested but insisted bottled water during the stay. The funny part is the bottled water comes from the same place.

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FWIW, it may make sense to drink bottled water if you're traveling to faraway places. At least that's how we were briefed before a business trip to China - stick to bottled water and boiled water, do not drink tap water or some natural source, because we're not adapted to the local bacteriological environment. A co-worker did not obey that and ended up spending one of his trip sick instead of working. But then again, I'm not sure how true this is - after all, we'd all be exposed to the same pathogens when showering.

That's definitely true, but also I don't understand why people want to drink _straight_ from the tap? I mean, don't people have simple water filters at home? These filters are effective for bacteria and heavy metals. It's common in my country even though we have good quality water from the tap.

In countries with fine public water, it's common for people to be advertised and sold filters, but they don't actually need them, and other people prefer not to waste their money.

But only very slightly unless you deliberately drink large quantities of shower water.

I drink bottled water for a couple of reasons:

- I did not plan well and I'm now in a situation where I need water I didn't bring my own bottle. I don't want to be chained to a water fountain if one even exists conveniently near me. - I don't like the taste of the water where I am. Clean water isn't always tasty water. As someone who grew up on aquifer water, I found the chemically water of my college town hard to deal with. At least bottled water was inoffensive. For some brands anyway. - I want easily sharable water. This one became pretty important when I was a parent. It's just easy to keep a bunch of water in my trunk and pass it out to my and other kids on demand. I knew people like this, but it wasn't until I had kids that I got it. Kids will ignore their body needs and aren't always capable of finding sources of water on the even if they were aware.

So much depends on having public spaces to be kid- (/parents-) friendly !

I've worked places where the water fountains are taped off with notes saying the water isn't potable, and to get bottled water from the fridge. Another scenario is walking around town in the summer. Sometimes a park with a working fountain is nearby, but if not then bottled water from a shop is the low-effort option (you could also ask for a cup of water from a restaurant, always free in America although not necessarily in other parts of the world, but that requires a more awkward social interaction..) If a working clean water fountain is available I'm happy to drink from it, but often that isn't the case.

> I’m amazed how well their marketing worked to convince people that water is literally toxic unless it comes bottled.

Not too many people think this, there are so many places where the tap water is not good for drinking.

I have never in my life heard anybody talk about improving tap water to make it good for drinking, and when I mention it people dismiss it. And then everybody rages against bottled water.

> not only requested but insisted bottled water during the stay.

Yes, this happens all the time. It is amazing how distrustful people can be of fresh water in nature. I blame it on urbanisation and the cattle-fication of the population by the human farmers controlling schooling and media.

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