I read something in the NY Times yesterday that simultaneously made me laugh and cringe. For a long, long time now, I�ve scratched my head at the whole bottled water craze that seems to get more and more ridiculous every year, and yesterday I finally read an article that was asking the same WTF!?! questions I�ve been asking. Its water, people- 2 hydrogen atoms bonded to an oxygen atom. It has the same atomic structure whether you get it from a Parisian spring, some mountain in Alaska, or the tub in your bathroom. Its the same thing you get out of drinking fountains and your kitchen sink, yet millions of people pay upwards of 2 dollars for a mere liter of it- simply because it comes from some Icelandic glacier- which by the way is dirtier than the water from your tap. And now there are all of these �flavored� waters on the market with coloring, flavoring and sweeteners, which is basically another way of saying its soda without the carbonation. I see people parading around work and walking around town with their bottles of Desani and Evian (which is �na�ve� spelled backwards in case you hadn�t noticed) and I can�t understand why these people are paying so much money for something that is essentially free in this country. Roughly 2 million liters of tap water cost the same amount as one liter of bottled water- depending on how �premium� a brand you buy. And something else to keep in mind- all of these people that buy it because it is so �pure and natural� are helping destroy the very environment that is producing this water for them. Think about all of the fuel that is used to transport water the 8,000 miles from Fiji to your grocery store. Or perhaps all the crude oil used to make the 30 million bottles that are thrown out every day in this country that the water is bottled in. I must say, I am very impressed with the ability of these companies to convince so many people into forking out billions of dollars a year for something that costs virtually nothing. I wonder how long it will be until some marketing genius comes up with a scheme to start selling air?

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