After the Perrier scandal in 1990, when the bottled water was shown to contain benzene, and the Dasani fiasco last year, it seems surprising that we're drinking more bottled water than ever before, writes Anushri Patel. According to a report by Mintel, just under two billion litres were sold in 2004, 50% more than in 1999.
Ken Livingstone probably won't be too pleased with the resultant toilet flushing.
Apparently this is because consumers are becoming more health conscious or want to lose weight. Funny, I thought all water was calorie free, so what exactly is so special about bottled water?
Do we distrust our water supply?
Only 29% of UK adults believe tap water is just as good as bottled water and 15% of adults use a water purifier at home, according to Mintel's research. It was the over-65s who remained defiant, with more than half saying they refused to pay for bottled water.
Perhaps bottled water is simply a better tasting drink.
Having completed two years of a physics degree, I decided to put my six hours of lab a week to good use, and conducted a 'scientific' experiment to settle the score. Armed with three identical bottles of different samples of water - tap, filtered and mineral - I questioned members of the Guardian Unlimited staff to see if they could tell the difference between A, B and C.
They had what I can only describe as 'atypical' opinions.
Of the highly representative and reliable sample of five staff members I interrogated, only one correctly identified sample A as tap water, after immediately deeming it "definitely disgusting". Another attributed a "smooth sort of nuttiness" to A and insisted it was mineral water. A third decided that A and B and tasted "exactly the same" and concluded that B was the mineral water.
Sample C, the mineral water, was unexpectedly unpopular. Only one staff member correctly identified it, while a couple decided C was the tap water after finding it "quite nasty".
Only one of my guinea pigs identified all three samples correctly, and most of them preferred the taste of the tap water and therefore concluded that it must have been mineral water.
So in my scientific opinion, if people want a nicer tasting beverage, try carrot and strawberry juice instead.
Leave the bottled water to the paranoid health freaks.
