Taste Test – Mineral Water.

Three bottles of mineral water.

How on earth do you do a taste test on mineral water? Don’t they all taste the same? and are colourless and odourless?  

Well that might be the view, but I was going to do one anyway, and I came up with a few surprises along the way.  

The top three surprises I came across were;  

1. You might be poisoning yourself.  

2. Some mineral water is not mineral water at all.  

3. The best mineral water is free.  

Interested? well read on.  

This was a standard taste test, done blind (meaning the bottles were covered up, and the Taste Buddies had no idea what they were drinking). The water was still and drunk at room temperature.  

By the way, the definition of mineral water is that it should come from a recognized spring, ie; from the earth.  

All the mineral waters were widely available and were bought in my local Pick n’Pay and Woolworths. All cost r3.50-r6.00  

4 bottles of mineral water.

Caledon, Valpre, Evian all looked the same, were odourless and crystal clear. It was the same with Woolworths water, Karoo Spring Water, Bonaqua, Pick n’Pay water, and finally Table Mountain Spring Water.  

The first surprise was that Bonaqua is not even a mineral water, even though it was packaged like one, is found on the same shelves as the rest of them in the mineral water section, and costs the same.  

So what is it?  It’s a “Prepared Water”.  

Wha?  

Exactly. Reading the very small type the front label declares the contents to be “Premium Still Prepared Water”.  

Round the side, past the FIFA logo, (am I allowed mention FIFA?) is printed the information that “Reverse Osmosis and Ozonation are used as a purification process on water obtained from a public or private distribution system“…whoa there a minute! public distribution!, you mean tap water?? this is tapwater?? Was there something wrong with the tap water in the first place that they had to “Purify” it??  But let’s go on…..”….to which just the right amounts of minerals are added back to deliver a premium, pure and clean taste”.  

What bullshit is this?  Marketing bullshit surely.   

I turn the label and, shock horror!! there it is – more small text ” A product of the Coca Cola Company”. This explains everything. Who else would have the cojones to pipe our public water into bottles and sell it to us. Coca Cola of course. They tried it a few years ago in the UK where outrage arose when it was discovered that they were bottling tap water and selling it to the public as Dasani designer water. Amidst the public outcry they withdrew the product from the marketplace claiming that the local water was producing Bromate (causes cancer) during the “purification” process. Message; Tap water is unsafe and we are just trying to help.  

Some mineral water is not mineral water.

But back to the tasting. All the water tasted more or less the same. They all tasted of water.  

Except one.  

That was Table Mountain Spring Water. It tasted fresh, clean, alive, healthy and so delicious it was a revelation. Where do you get it?  

Well it’s free, and comes out of a pipe on the side of a ditch on Springs Way in Newlands. It’s a mountain stream that wends it’s way off Table Mountain before joining the Liesbeek River in Newlands. There’s a reason why the brewers all started up on Newlands Avenue all those years ago; the water was, and still is, the best. It’s the purest cleanest water anywhere, and is filtered down through the rock of table mountain. This is what gives it it’s delicious qualities. One taste and you’ll understand what I mean.  

I go over to Springs Way every few days and fill glass bottles from this pipe. There are usually other people there too, filling their jugs and bottles, in the know about this wonderful gift from nature.  

That was surprise number two.  

Surprise number three.  

I use glass bottles for my water because I believe plastic bottles are dangerous to your health. They are made from Polyethylene Terephthalate, or PET for short. PET produces a toxic  

Table Mountain.

agent called Antimony, which leeches from the plastic to the water, like a tea bag in a cup of hot water.  

Normal ground water contains 2 parts antimony per trillion of water. Water in PET bottles contains up to 700 parts Antimony per trillion. And in hot weather it gets worse if we leave the PET bottles in cars that get very hot in the sun. Antimony causes depression, dizziness, headaches and vomiting.It is used primarily in the manufacture of lead acid batteries. The longer water is left in PET bottles the more contaminated it becomes. Dr. Wilhelm Shotyk of Heidelberg University analysed hundreds of samples from German supermarkets and discovered that the contamination levels double every three months. All the bottles I bought had a best before date of about 12 months.  

I also use glass bottles because of the awful damage PET bottles do to the environment. Most are dumped in landfills where they take about 10,000 years to decompose, and leech Antimony into the soil.When you think about the oil used in their manufacture, the  packaging, shipping and storage costs and the cost of disposal you begin to wonder.  

Cape Town Tap Water is amongst the best in the world.

So where did it all go wrong with water? Analysts will point to the US in the 1970’s, and show how soft drinks manufacturers saw their growth graphs beginning to flatline. People just could not drink any more of the stuff, and besides, they were copping on to the fact that 10 spoons of sugar while drinking a Coke was not a good thing. So Perrier was the first on the market. People thought they were mad, but look how the market has developed. The market is now worth 7 billion Euros per annum.  

The solution? Tap water.  

The water in Cape Town is as good as any tap water anywhere in the world.  

Or you could try Table Mountain Spring Water. It’s free, delicious and a real treat.  

Table Mountain image courtesy of Andrew Cooper.