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Mineralised, vitamised, natural, spring, distilled... whatever happened to plain old water? Kathryn Kelly gets to the bottom of the various classifications found on your carefully designed bottle, and asks: are we wasting our money on mere marketing spiel?

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It’s water Jim, but not as we know it. It’s mineralised and vitamised. They sell it for women and they sell it for travellers. You can get it kosher and you get it personalised. Whatever it is, it’s two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, and every part marketed.

Long gone are the days when carrying a bottle of water probably meant you were a hippie in long flowing kaftans. Bottled water is omnipresent and nowhere more so than on the net. Google ‘water’ and you’ll see there are potentially 997 million hits – that compares with 400 million for oil and 764 million for sex. Go figure.

A thousand litres of tap water in Hong Kong costs about $3, and yet most of us are happy, willing and thirsty enough to pay upwards of $10 for a litre of bottled water. Are we mad, are we wasting our money? Yes, yes, yes, and probably – that’s according to the Water Supplies Department (WSD), the World Health Organisation (WHO) the Earth Policy Institute (EPI) and my doctor. Yes, because we live in a developed country and our water supply is safe (see p12); yes, because we’re contributing to one of the world’s worst waste mountains; yes, because the cost in transporting bottles of water from Europe all round the world is astronomical and 5,000 children die every day somewhere in the world due to lack of water or poor sanitation; and probably, according to Dr Wong in Wan Chai, because there are so many minerals pumped into some of the bottled waters we’re buying that our spleens are getting saturated.

America consumes the most bottled water, drinking a staggering 7 billion gallons per year. Mexico comes in second place and Brazil ties for third place with China. There are presently no available figures for the number of bottles we consume in Hong Kong, but those in the know – from supermarket managers to restaurateurs – say sales are on the increase. Our supermarkets now sell more and more different brands and our restaurants pride themselves on supplying exclusive water brands. I counted 49 different kinds of bottled water in specialty food store Olivers, in Central. On their top shelf was the cheap but not-particularly-cheerful Watsons distilled variety, in its instantly recognisable green torpedo-shaped bottle – and on the bottom shelf was the functional blue-topped “mineralized” Bonaqua from the Coca-Cola Company. On the shelves in between, is an A (Arrowhead, Aquarel and Acqua Panna) through S (San Alessandro, San Benedetto, San Faustino, San Pellegrino and Strathmore) to V (Volvic and Vittel) of mineral, spring, natural, rain, distilled sparkling and flavoured waters. But is there any difference between them really? Do you hesitate as you reach for the competitively priced distilled choice on the top shelf, wondering if the slightly more expensive mineralised one in the sexy blue bottle is actually better for you? Once and for all – what’s the difference?

Bottled water comes under food as far as the Food Standards Agency is concerned and so it is to them that we must look for some guidance. Their rules must be adhered to for a bottle of water to use the terms on its labelling. There are two main groups, the one with natural mineral water and spring water in it – and everything else.

Natural mineral water is water originating in an underground water table, deposit or aquifer which emerges or is extracted from a source tapped at one or more natural or bore exits. It must come from an officially recognised spring (ie not just any old hole in the ground), it must be microbiologically wholesome (ie no additives or preservatives pumped into it) and it must be protected from all risk of pollution (it doesn’t flow through any open sewers). Natural mineral water must be bottled at source, it must not be disinfected and its composition must remain.

Water can only be labelled spring water if it originates in an underground water source, is bottled at source and satisfies most of the conditions that apply to natural mineral water – however water labelled as spring water does not need to be officially recognised.

Everything else is bottled drinking water: which means it can come from a variety of sources and that includes municipal sources – so in other words, if it’s not got the words “natural mineral water” or “spring water” on the label, then it could have come from a tap, albeit a tap in the French Alps or near a volcanic spring in the south Pacific, but a tap.

Distilled water is the liquid caught after water has been boiled. Imagine you boil the kettle and somehow capture the steam as it comes out of the spout – that would be distilled water. You will see bottles with labels claiming to be “Pure distilled water” but there is no FSA definition for “pure” when it comes to distilled water – and let’s be honest, no-one is going to market, “not-so-pure” anything.

Mineralised water could be any of the waters mentioned above (but most likely distilled) with minerals added – check the label to find out where, when and how much. Ditto “vitamised water”. (Bottled waters are bound by the FSA regulations nowadays to carry a “typical analysis” breakdown of their contents on the side of the bottle.)

So which is better for you, mineral or distilled? According to one school of thought, distilled water is to be avoided because it contains absolutely nothing of any nutritional benefit and can consequently strip your bloodstream of some essential minerals as it passes through your body. However, you would need to be drinking vast amounts of only distilled water for protracted lengths of time for that to actually happen. According to Dr Wong, I need to avoid over-mineralised water if I want to avoid resaturating my spleen. According to common sense, you need at least two litres of the stuff in your body every day so make sure you’re getting it from a clean and unpolluted source.

Read the other features:
Liquid assets
Tapping the market