Evian is "naive" spelled backward!

A recent “Tap Water Challenges” conducted by Corporate Accountability International in 5 US cities demonstrated that the bottled-water industry has been exploiting a misleading and manipulative marketing strategy to dupe the general public.

The group urges these water bottling companies to stop promoting their products as purer or safer than general tap waters. Products such as Aquafina and Dasani (bottled by Pepsi and Coca-Cola) are basically tap water, with a few minerals tossed in for taste.

But, apparently the consumers love their bottled waters. For the bottled water industry, in 2004 was a 9.2 billion dollar business, which in terms translates to about 6.8 billion gallons of water. That’s a LOT of water! But, do bottled waters really taste “better” than what it comes out of your tabs?

In Philadelphia, people who participated one particular test were blindfold while test conductors poured 4 different types of water into their plastic cups. The blindfold then was removed and participants were tried to match each numbered cup with the “source” of its water. The waters being used for this test were: Nestle's Poland Spring, Coca-Cola's Dasani, Pepsi's Aquafina and you guessed; plain old boring city tap water!

And what was people’s response? One lady correctly identified the tap water and said she liked it. She also added that sometimes the bottled water tasted a bit “salty”. Another gentleman, who happened to be a doctor, thought he had a bit luck going for him that day, got 60% correct. He’s not too sure the tap water is just as “safe” as bottled waters, as public waters has to travel through miles of mental pipes in the city water system and are bound to leach contaminants by the time water exits the spigot. One other guy expressed that he would only drink bottled waters because they taste better.

In the end, actually, no one bothered to keep score in this bottled vs. tap challenge. Activists felt they made their point. And the point is that bottled-water drinkers are being bamboozled by bottled-water companies who marked up this basic human commodity of hundreds of times its true cost!