BBC Focus Magazine

[Jamie]

For your amusement only.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... ation.html

[M Paul Lloyd]

Yes, heard this on the radio yesterday.

Amazingly it has been proven that water is actually wet.... who would have thought it?

[Shadowwolf]

I do believe that there is more to this than the Telegraph's short article to make the EU look silly, it has more to do with bottled water folks trying to make health statements about their product. Anyhoo there is more here from the Guardian which includes a link to the actual doc.

It's a bit like the whole banana thing a few years back where a regulation on shape was decried as EU bureaucracy gone mad. However as the magnificent QI found, it was merely an EU version of already existing regulations in countries including the UK.

[Healerman]

Prof Brian Ratcliffe, spokesman for the Nutrition Society, said dehydration was usually caused by a clinical condition and that one could remain adequately hydrated without drinking water.

Professor of what? This works if you are a gerbil, obtaining all the water you need from metabolising your food, but a human needs fluid intake to survive. Whether it is tea, milk, fruit juice, whatever; the vital component is WATER.

If you have gastro-enteritis or dysentery, then no source of plain water will hydrate you, because it will go straight through. That is why, without medical support, dysentery particularly is a killer. So a sweeping satement on the hydrating properties of water is technically incorrect...but seriously.

The issue is really about claims suggesting a particular brand does it better, which is arrant nonsense, but is it worth the substantial cost that this exercise has raised? The eurocrats involved, under previously existing consumer law, had merely to turn to the producers and ask them to prove their claim. "No? Then take it off the bottle."

What next? "Warning, this packet of peanuts, may contain nuts"? Instructions on a pack of toothpicks?
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[...]

i cannot understand people in britain actually buying bottled water??? why not use a flask of tap water and give a couple of quid to charity every day

[Shadowwolf]

It is truly a baffling industry, here pay for what you already have

[ChrisH]

Apparently the standards required for tap water is higher than that for bottled water. I'll stick with the tap water myself.

[M Paul Lloyd]

The only thing that bothers me about tap water, apart from the day that ours was loaded with little brown shrimp like creatures, is that if left in a glass or container for any length of time it ends up tasting like mouthwash because of all the Chlorine they use to steralise it.

[Thinker]

There is also the small matter that tap water which is freely available at home, is not necassarily available from the petrol service station while you are driving. Yes, yes, you can take a bottle with you if you want, but sometimes we all forget. I don't think I'd want to stick my head under the service toilet tap or anything like that!

[M Paul Lloyd]

A very good point thinker and I do recall that public drinking fountains were once widely available, although I do not recall seeing one that worked for probably 45 years?

[Thinker]

The thought of using a public drinking fountain, makes me quite queezy!