Bottled water or tap?

We British consume more than two billion litres of bottled water every year, or 33 litres per person. This might sound a lot, but we drink almost three times as much beer as bottled water and five times as much tea.

But why buy water in a bottle when you have already paid for what comes out of the tap? This question is particularly pertinent when you consider that most people — or most French people anyway — are unable to tell the difference between bottled waters and that straight from the tap, according to one study.

The French study, published in 2010 in the Journal of Sensory Studies, compared the taste preferences of nearly 400 people for six varieties of bottled mineral water and six municipal tap waters. It found that, if tap water is chlorine-free, most people could not tell the difference between bottled and tap water. However, more than a third were able to tell the difference.

The study identified three main tastes found in water from various sources. They are the bitterness of poorly mineralised water, the neutral taste (associated with coolness) of water with medium mineralisation, and the saltiness and astringency of highly mineralised water.

A 1999 study, published in the Journal of Home Economics of Japan, compared the preference for various types of mineral water among a group of women and a group of rats. Interestingly, or not, the women’s preference for various brands of bottled water was similar to that of the rats. The researchers concluded that the tastiness of water is down to its mineral content, with a hardness of around 50mg/L being the best for drinking water.